The Last Romanov (4 page)

The truth, which Darya has heard from her mother, is that when the Tsarina was six years old, diphtheria assailed her home, the palace in Hesse Darmstadt. Within a few weeks Alix lost both her mother and sister. The tragedy caused the cheerful, sensitive, and obstinate little girl to withdraw, a habit reinforced by the Victorian tutelage of her grandmother, Queen Victoria of Britain. Even now, years later, the Empress seldom allows anyone into her private shell, and when she does, it is only to a cherished few: her husband, her daughters, her friend Sabrina Josephine, and perhaps Darya now, who finds herself explaining to the Tsarina how the mystic has taught her to create healing unguents with the plethora of herbs and minerals found in the Belovezh Forest: angelica for pleurisy, bayberry for the chill, black walnut to purify blood, chestnuts to arrest convulsive coughs, and black haw to tone the female reproductive organs.

“Fascinating! Come, Darya. Come with me to the prayer corner.” The Empress goes to the back of the room and kneels in front of a wall of icons illuminated by candles. “Let us pray together. You, too, Sabrina, join us. There's power in numbers.”

Sabrina sweeps her skirts up, raising the scent of earth and pine and patchouli, the forest scent that has become a second skin. She lacks the patience to stay still and pray, longs to explore the hills on horseback or join the men for a swim in the sea. Hers is a life of activity, riding, hunting, and loving. Prayers are imparted on the run.

The three women bow their heads as the Tsarina murmurs her prayers. The Empress is preoccupied with the list of healing salves Darya just mentioned, unable to concentrate, even as a crowd of saints of all sizes, shapes, and colors view her with mournful eyes. She is adding and subtracting days to calculate the date of her next menstrual cycle, reflecting on the many times she has not only disappointed Nicky but an entire empire. She turns to Sabrina, rests her hand on her arm, and glances questioningly toward Darya.

Sabrina knows her friend, understands that her modesty holds her back from communicating freely in Darya's presence.“Darya is ready, Alix. I've taught her everything I know, and what I have not, she is learning from her animals. You may discuss any subject you please.”

The Empress gazes at Darya, not a hint of her inner conflict reflecting on her face. “The herbs you mentioned, my dear, have you come across others perhaps that might induce the female to produce a boy?”

Darya is unable to conceal the many clashing emotions that creep up into her eyes, turning them deeper gold. She is overwhelmed with a feeling of joy, replaced by unimaginable sadness, and as quickly by a sense of indistinguishable uncertainty, as if she is about to open a door and step into the unknowable.

“Yes, Your Majesty, I can name a number of herbs that might help a woman produce a boy. But you don't need any, Your Majesty. You are with child. A boy. An heir to the throne.”

A shadow of a smile brightens the Empress's features. She rises to her feet with a sense of unexpected solidity. She stares into the distance, fingers touching the pearls at her neck, raising the brilliant string, an absent motion as if she is dreaming a better future.

It would take another twenty days for the Empress to believe that she is indeed with child and to allow herself a sliver of hope.

Darya Borisovna braves the smoke and commotion of Ekaterinburg and walks toward Rostislav Perfumery, where emissaries of the Nobility Association await her arrival.

She wears a wide-brimmed bonnet woven with golden braids and a fawn mantle trimmed with decaying ostrich feathers. She aims her cane like a weapon at the hostile streets, blaring traffic, belching factories, and rushing pedestrians. She averts her gaze from the wooden cross erected on the site of the Ipatiev House, the spectacle of which has been chipping at her heart, breaking a piece off every time she passes. For seventy-three years the house where the Imperial Family was slaughtered stood here like a filthy wad of spit on the face of the Soviet government, before being demolished fourteen years ago. Now rumors abound that the government intends to build a memorial Church-on-the-Blood here to commemorate the Romanovs.

A legacy of shame taints Ekaterinburg, infusing generations with the need to forget. Brains have become dense and murky. The Romanov executions are regarded as a legend rather than a stain on the canvas of history. Generations seem unable to conceptualize facts, a nation feeding on folklore. Darya, with her elaborate hats topped with faded, artificial flowers and her flounced gowns of the Romanov era, is an unwelcome reminder.

How in the world did she not realize then, not until it was too late, that a volcanic brew of discontent bubbled under them all? Such ignorance, she berates herself, such lack of judgment to invite that wandering monk, Grigori Rasputin, to court. By the time she realized what she had done, the revolution had spiraled out of control. The Bolshevik Red Bastards deceived the people with a grand illusion of a Soviet state, set brother against brother, executed countless millions, and left a ravaged Russia in their wake. The end of the Romanovs, the Bolsheviks had supposed, their relief echoing across seas and oceans. But they were mistaken, the enemies of the monarchy, they certainly were. There is a reason why she survived that black night in the basement in Ekaterinburg. A reason why the Tsarevich has survived too.

The bells of the Church of the Trinity announce four o'clock. She arrives at the perfumery and takes a moment to collect herself.

The store window is packed with shiny bottles nestled in crushed satin the color of the Siberian aquamarine brooch the Tsarevich Nicholas gave his fiancée three months before their wedding. Yes, Darya remembers well the excitement with which the Empress showed her the signed initials of Fabergé workmaster Henrik Wigström on the brooch. She wore it often. The Tsar enjoyed seeing his beloved wife bedecked in imperial regalia and shimmering in jewels. He insisted that his massive collection of gifts to her be carried in large hardwood boxes wherever the family traveled.

A “Store Closed” sign dangles behind the perfumery's glass door.

It is not surprising that the meeting is held here.

Rostislav Alekseevich Dalevich is a staunch monarchist. His perfumery is the hub of all types of political rumors that have to do with the Romanovs. He is also a craniometrist and a forensic anthropologist, whose expertise the government often seeks.

Rostislav is Darya's most important link to the outside world. He is the man in possession of the latest news. Together they have mourned the rise of Bolshevism and atheism and celebrated Leningrad's vote to take back its rightful name, St. Petersburg. They followed with skeptical interest as Communism came to an end two years earlier, Germany was reunified, and Boris Yeltsin administered the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

She lifts her necklace and takes a deep breath from the Fabergé egg, the emanating scent evoking delicious memories of her mother.

Darya braces herself and rings the bell. The door is unlocked from inside, and Rostislav ushers her into his sun-splashed perfumery with its floor-to-ceiling windows, chrome walls, and immaculate glass counters. Bottles of varying colors sparkle on shelves and counters. Crystal, silver, and Lalique stoppers of different shapes and designs—seeded with turquoise beads, onion-shaped church domes, mythical forms—adorn bottlenecks. Plants, herbs, and flowers are immersed in clear cylinders filled with alcohol, undergoing the process of enfleurage for extracting essential oils.

She follows the perfumer across the shiny linoleum floor, averting her gaze from his scarred profile, caused by an accident in his youth that consumed half his face, leaving the other side as smooth as a baby's bottom.

It happened when his father, a forensic anthropologist, went mad in the years of anarchy, ordering his son to study the science of examining cadavers. But Rostislav wanted nothing to do with malodorous, putrefying bodies. He liked to distill the essence of flowers, to measure and weigh and mix all types of petals to compose aromatic formulas. One day, finding his son's nose poked into a fistful of rose petals, the father had, in a burst of rage, hurled a bottle of acid at the boy. Just like that, the left side of Rostislav's face was burned into a permanent grimace.

Now, he leads Darya into a room with pastel wall-to-wall carpeting and whitewashed walls, aluminum chairs, and a round table on which a bottle of champagne chills in an ice bucket.

Two men, emissaries of the Russian nobility, and a woman, executive secretary of the association, rise to greet her. She acknowledges them with a brief nod and takes her seat among the few who have the courage to face her, the few whose political ideology resembles her own. She studies the group, their expressions and mannerisms, stares intently at their unflinching gaze to determine their honesty. In these unstable times, when people are either afraid to talk or have no qualms about convicting innocent citizens, everyone is suspect. Having concluded that they are neither on God's side nor the devil's, she addresses them with guarded anticipation.

“What can I do for you?”

The executive secretary tugs her skirt over stout knees. “Thank you for granting us a few minutes of your time. As you know, the last six years have brought a change in our country with glasnost and perestroika—”

“An important junction in our history,” the younger man adds, pomaded hair and aristocratic forehead glistening in the white light from the great windows.

Darya struggles to stop her opinions from bursting out of her mouth. She has no faith in glasnost or perestroika, is certain that not even a single Baltic state has truly become independent. The full dissolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party will not happen until each and every godless Communist is buried upside-down like rotten radishes.

The silver-haired, square-jawed emissary coughs twice and lights a cigarette. His voice is raspy. “It's time to stabilize Russia. Unify our national identity. Fill the ideological vacuum the Communist regime left.”

“How, may I ask, do you intend to achieve that?” Darya asks, a note of impatience creeping into her voice.

“What do
you
propose?” The gray-haired man throws the question back at her.

A bitter smile appears on her face. “Need you ask? To reinstate the monarchy, of course.”

“Exactly! And this is our intention.”

She aims her incredulous gaze at them. “Good heavens! Is this the truth?”

“It certainly is. We have been planning for years. In fact, preliminary preparations to reinstate the monarchy are in progress as we speak.”

Darya gasps, digs her fists in her pocket. “Then you must have someone in mind for our next Tsar.”

“Possibly,” the executive secretary replies. “And that's the reason we called this emergency meeting. Rostislav Alekseevich, please explain the rest.”

The perfumer abandons his seat, adjusts his jacket about his wrestler's shoulders, and begins to pace the room. “This is classified, you understand. Please refrain from discussing it until the government makes a decision. Seven days ago, Boris Yeltsin authorized the opening of the Ekaterinburg grave believed to be the burial site of the Romanovs. I was asked to appear at the government morgue to help a group of forensic anthropologists identify the recently exhumed remains.”

Darya doesn't know what to do with her hands, her wild heart, the many clashing voices in her head. She had, for years, mapped the plan for a day such as this as she went about looking for the Tsarevich, imagining how she would greet him, embrace him, ask for his forgiveness. The quest became her life's goal, the nucleus of her universe. It kept her alive in hope of purging the sins she committed in her past life, so much so that the thought that he might have perished with the others did not occur to her. And now Rostislav is telling her that the remains of the Imperial Family have been disinterred. What if the Tsarevich is discovered among them? What if her life's quest to find him proves to be nothing but an old woman's pitiful longings? She finds a hallucinatory berry in her pocket, is about to drop it in her mouth, but decides against it. She cannot escape into the past, not now.

With great relish, Rostislav continues to recount the events of the last few nights, every detail down to the decor of the morgue, where the walls are the color of urine and he keeps on dropping bonbons in his dry mouth to mask the taste of death.

“It was terrible, I tell you! Dreadful beyond belief. The bodies were chopped to pieces, burned in sulfuric acid, and buried for decades in a shallow grave. The bones were no longer sheathed in flesh, of course, but had to be boiled clean before the meticulous labor of identification began.” The next six nights Rostislav had dined in the morgue while the bones boiled in large vats that emitted the stench of decay. He chewed on a piece of bread rolled around a slice of cured ham, periodically setting his plate on the pot handle, where steam kept his meal warm. He conducted a silent discourse with his father. He had become a forensic anthropologist, he boasted to his long-gone father, but not any ordinary cadaver-poking anthropologist. He was examining the remains of the Imperial Family. Every now and then he checked the bubbling brew of remains and popped yet another bonbon in his mouth.

“It's hard enough to identify the two hundred and six bones in the human body. But nearly impossible to recognize chemically degraded bones that were exposed in a shallow grave for seventy-three years. For hours we reconstructed shattered thigh bones, bayonet-crushed skulls, burned and disintegrated vertebrae. Quite difficult, but in the end, we managed to provide tentative, preliminary results. More needs to be done, of course—sample preparation, DNA extraction, PCR amplifications, extensive DNA tests using samples from relatives—to prove the authenticity of the remains. Before conclusive results are announced and even then—”

“To the point, Rostislav Alekseevich,” Darya interrupts. “We don't have all day.”

“The remains,” he replies, “belong to the Romanovs.”

“Are you certain?” Darya asks. “Swear on your mother's grave!”

“Please, Darya Borisovna, do not insult me.”

Darya stands up and walks to the great windows, the bright light sharp as razors. She has an urge to pray, but to whom? To what? The windows face the backyard, where carefully delineated beds of daisies, magnolias, begonias, and lilies sprout as colorful as the bottles displayed inside. When did spring arrive? Will next year be different? Will she notice the change of seasons? Rejoice at the blooming flowers? Feel the autumn leaves crunch beneath her feet? Feel the first fat snowflakes piling on the brim of her hat? She turns to face the perfumer, her throat dry, her tongue heavy. She wets her lips and asks the question she has been avoiding for seventy-three years. “Did you identify the remains of Alexei?”

“This is what I'm getting to, Darya Borisovna. You are making me nervous; can I ask you to sit down?”

She stands paralyzed, unable to move, until he approaches her and asks if she is all right, if he can offer her a glass of water, which makes her let out a loud sigh, because she realizes that nothing will calm her now, not even Little Servant's potent vodka. “I don't want water, Rostislav. Just answer my question.”

“Your answer is that I have no doubt, no doubt at all, that the bones of the Tsarevich, Alexei Nikolaevich Romanov, heir and Grand Duke of Russia, were
not
among the remains!”

All eyes are on Darya, and it takes a moment for her to process the good news and another moment for her muscles to function again. Going to the small table, she grabs a flute of champagne, raises it in a rare gesture of joy, and drinks it in three quick gulps. She seizes the perfumer's hand and gives it a few affectionate squeezes. “Thank you, Rostislav. You confirm what I knew all along. Here, have some champagne!”

The executive secretary pats her lips with a napkin. “You should know, Darya Borisovna, that we received a recent telegraph informing us that a claimant to the throne has been living quietly in Russia.”

“Where?” Darya cries out. “Right here? The Tsarevich himself? His son? Grandson perhaps?”

“You may find that out for yourself. Being the only surviving member of that Imperial Court, you are best suited to confirm, or refute, this person's claim. A meeting can be arranged.”

Darya clutches her cane, the contours of her body acquiring a new youthfulness. “When? Where?”

“As soon as you are ready to travel to the estate of Grand Duchess Sophia Sheremetev.”