The Lost Crown (3 page)

At that very moment, Monsieur Gilliard himself appears in the doorway, his arms full of our brother’s favorite storybooks. Aleksei explodes with laughter, and the pinch of happiness inside my chest splits open like a firecracker. Anastasia turns white for a flash, then grabs me by the arm and pulls me straight under Monsieur’s mustache and into the corridor, slamming the door on our tutor’s bewildered face. Despite Mama’s startled glance and Tatiana’s glare, I can’t help wrapping my arms around my clown of a little sister with a hug that lifts her from her feet. Even though I know something dreadful has happened, for that moment, the only thing I can think of is that I love Anastasia best of all.

2.

TATIANA NIKOLAEVNA

July 1914
Gulf of Finland

“T
he news is all bad,” Olga whispers, and for once I agree with my melancholy eldest sister. Just a few days ago, a woman stabbed and nearly killed our beloved friend, Mama’s confidant,
Otets
Grigori Rasputin. The telegram said she screamed, “I’ve killed the Antichrist!” then tried to drive the knife into her own abdomen.

“Poor Mama!” I whisper back, nodding toward the deck chair where Mama sits with the French ambassador, a pained expression on her face. “All the powder in the world cannot hide the circles under her eyes. Worrying about Aleksei’s accident has wearied her more than anything.”

In the midst of everything else the French president is paying us an official state visit. For days we have been wrapped up in ceremonies, receptions, and military reviews. Even here on the president’s battleship, away from St. Petersburg’s gossipy socialites, I cannot help hovering nearby. Mama is so anxious for Aleksei, left behind at our
dacha
in Peterhof while his ankle heals, that I pray for Christ to lend His strength to both her and Our Friend. Mama’s health depends on
Otets
Grigori’s survival almost as much as Aleksei’s.

“How has she managed it?” I ask. Olga shakes her head too. “She was frantic with nerves this morning. You know how bad it can be. She nearly cried every time the president’s name was mentioned.”

Olga squeezes my hand. “You’ve gotten her this far, Tatya. We’ll be back aboard our own
Standart
tonight, after the president’s sending-off.”

“Thank God for that. I doubt she could take one more banquet or parade.” I do not tell Olga, but I know I am not the one who has brought Mama this far. One moment Mama can be frightened as a lamb in the wild, and the next, it is as if Christ himself takes her hand and pulls her above it all.

With a blast of brass and drums, the ship’s band breaks into a march, and I startle halfway out of my wicker armchair. Across the deck, Mama’s hands go to her ears, her cheeks dark as wine. Before I can recover myself, Olga motions for me to sit, then glides toward Mama just as the ambassador signals the musicians to cease.

My shoulders relax a little as I watch Olga whisper into Mama’s ear, then speak to the ambassador. None of my sisters understands our mother the way I do, but they try, God bless them. I only pray Olga’s temper will not break loose in all this tension. She comes back smiling, though, and pats my arm as she sits down.

“I asked Monsieur Paléologue to go on talking with Mama.”

“What will they talk about?”

She shrugs, her eyes twinkling like Papa’s. “I don’t know. That’s an ambassador’s job, isn’t it?”

“Anything but war, I hope.” Talk of war is everywhere. Two weeks before
Otets
Grigori was stabbed, a Serbian assassin shot the heir to the Austrian throne. The Austrians are furious, and no wonder. All Russia would mourn with us if someone murdered our precious Aleksei. Already Germany has leaped to Austria’s defense. The whole world seems to be taking up sides. “At least Papa wants nothing to do with war.”

Olga’s wide forehead furrows. “I heard Papa tell one of the ministers he’s determined to back the Serbians.”

I stare at her. “The Serbians? How could we, after what that Serbian beast did?”

“Papa says the Serbs are our Slavic brothers.”

My thoughts turn in circles. “If we take the Serbians’ side, we have to fight both Austria and Germany. That makes no sense, Olga. Mama is German.” So are Auntie Irene in Prussia, Uncle Ernie in Hesse, and their jolly little boys—our cousins. Just four years ago, we played with all of them in the courtyard at Wolfsgarten. “You think Papa would choose the Serbs over our own family?”

“At times like this, he has to be more than just Papa, Tatya.”

The certainty in her voice makes me shiver and cross myself in the warm gulf breeze. “Have you told the Little Pair?”

“No.”

Thank heaven. “Listen to me, Olga. There is no reason to worry them yet. Or Aleksei. Let them have the rest of their summer.” She nods. “What about Mama?”

Olga’s face clouds. She coils up her hands, running her thumbs over her fingernails the way she always does when she is nervous or angry. “I haven’t heard any more than Mama has. Maybe I’ve heard less.”

“But Olga,” I cry, ready to spring to Mama’s side. “What if the ambassador—”

“Shhh!” Olga hisses. “It’s not my place. And it’s not yours, either,” she says, laying a hand on my wrist. She smiles sadly at me. “Even a dutiful Governess like you can’t take care of everyone, Tatya.”

Peterhof

Olga was right. For days we hardly see Papa at all. Telegrams, ministers, and ambassadors come and go late into the night, while a haze of cigarette smoke creeps outside Papa’s study door. In the hall, a tray with a glass of milk and a fresh packet of cigarettes always waits. When he comes out to eat with us, his fingertips are yellowed by the tobacco, his beard flat on one side from the way he strokes it when he thinks.

“I had another telegram from Willi today,” Papa says to Mama at tea. Anastasia wrinkles her nose and rolls her eyes at the kaiser’s name, but the look on Olga’s face make me crush the tidbit I’ve been dangling for Ortipo into crumbs. Papa has hardly spoken about what is happening behind his study doors, and now the kaiser? I watch Mama. Her trembling embroidery needle knots over a simple row of satin stitches.

“Cousin Willi sends his best greetings for our Sunbeam’s tenth birthday,” Papa says, and reaches over to chuck Aleksei’s chin.

“He’s almost two weeks early,” Anastasia blurts. “Hasn’t he figured out how our calendar works yet?”

I pinch her under the table. Surely there was more to Cousin Willi’s telegram than birthday wishes. She glares and kicks me back, but she hushes. Papa gives her a tired smile. “He’s a very busy man, little Shvybzik.” The flash of fear in Mama’s eyes fades, but does not go out.

She knows more than Olga realizes.

The next day Papa joins us for evening prayers at the small Alexandria church. We file in the way we always do: Papa and Mama, then Olga, me, Maria, and Anastasia. OTMA, all in a row like the fingers of one hand, with me the tallest and Anastasia the smallest.

In the candlelight, the lines on Mama’s face seem deep as the folds of a bishop’s robe. She has not looked that way since Aleksei nearly died two years ago on holiday at Spala. Like then, she sends one telegram after another to
Otets
Grigori in Siberia. This time, though, they are not only about Aleksei. Now she cables him about the possibility of war.

Our parents pray almost feverishly. I watch Mama’s chest rise and fall, her jewels flashing in the candlelight with every breath. From where I stand, I can do nothing for her but pray.

Back at the
dacha
, Papa kisses Mama’s red cheek. “I’ll read the latest
dokladi
and come in to dinner,” he tells her. Her breath catches. “Only a few minutes, Sunny,” Papa promises. He whispers something in Mama’s ear that makes her smile before he walks away down the corridor, rubbing his beard and patting his coat pocket for another cigarette.

In the dining room, we manage to chat a little, but the minutes tick by, and even though she smiles at us, I notice the flush creeping back into Mama’s cheeks. My eyes jump from the clock to the door and back to Mama again and again. Olga sits quiet and still, giving me a long look while Maria and Anastasia’s talk weaves round us.

Finally Mama puts a hand to her chest and lets out a sharp breath. “Tatiana,” she says in a measured voice, “go and fetch your papa before his dinner goes cold.” My chair clatters across the floor as I rise, halting the Little Pair’s chatter.

The moment my hand touches the knob, it jolts under me. The door swings open. There stands Papa. He blinks at me, then clears his throat and tugs on his dinner jacket. He looks past all of us to the end of the table where Mama stands with her hands braced against the tabletop.

“It’s—,” Papa begins, then clears his throat again. “It’s war.”

Mama closes her eyes, trembling as she sinks into her chair. “War,” she whispers, and weeps.

All round the table, my sisters begin to cry. Only Anastasia’s eyes are dry, but when I see our Shvybzik’s sober face and bewildered eyes, I cross myself and cry first for her, and then for Russia.

“Tak i byt,”
Papa says.
So be it.

3.

ANASTASIA NIKOLAEVNA

July 1914
Peterhof

“T
he whole country has gone mad overnight!” I tell Aleksei. “Everywhere you turn, it’s war fever and God-save-the-tsar. Now I have to leave the
dacha
and go to the stinking city for the official declaration of war on Germany? I’d rather go to the beach.”

“But Nastya, the soldiers—” Aleksei’s ankle twitches, and his face crimps like he’s been pinched from the inside. “The soldiers have to see the tsar before they leave for the front. Papa will give them courage,” he says, sadly stroking the ribbon of the Legion of Honor the French president sent him just a few days ago.

“Poo. I don’t see why
I
have to go. Mama will make us all wear dresses like lace curtains, and those huge hats that make me look like a
galushka
next to our sisters. And whoever felt brave after looking at a boiled dumpling?” I flop Joy’s curly ears up over his head. Aleksei smiles a little, at last. “At least if you could go, I wouldn’t be the shortest one. I’d rather stay here than go to that musty old Winter Palace.”

I know how much Aleksei wants to go to the ceremony. His ankle is still as knobbly as a potato, and the soldiers can’t see him all pale and weak like this, no matter what. It’s impossible for him to go, and if I can’t stay at Peterhof with him, I have to cheer him up as much as I can before I leave.

“I’ll be bored to death. They’ll snap pictures of us like we’re a troupe of caged baboons, and Mama won’t even let us bring our Brownie cameras. I’d like to stick my lens in
their
faces for a change.” Aleksei doesn’t answer, so I arch my eyebrow and say, “They’ll sing that same old song again.”

“What song?”

He knows perfectly well what song. Our national anthem, “God Save the Tsar.” It’s a game we play. “Papa’s song. I wonder if the band gets as tired of it as I do?”

Aleksei smirks. “I bet they don’t have their own words to it like you.”

“I bet they do! I bet they’re the only people in all of Russia who have to listen to it as much as us.” I make my voice deep and trumpety, puff out my belly like a bass drum, and strut around the room, making up a new verse.

“Here comes the tsar again!
Strike up the tune, boys.
Why must we play him
that sa-a-ame old song?

“Surely the tsar could hear
a-a-anything he wants to!
Why don’t we pla-a-ay
‘Kali-i-inka’ instea-a-ad?”

The doorknob clicks, and when I turn around, there’s Olga with one fist propped on her hip, grinning like a cat with a canary jammed in its mouth. “Anastasia Nikolaevna, if I told Mama what you were doing instead of getting dressed—”

“But you won’t tell. That’s Tatiana’s job,” I say, and flick out my tongue.

She swats at me, but I duck to Aleksei’s side, kiss him good-bye, and dart out the door.

St. Petersburg