All through the service, Dmitri kept an eye on the guards, but it appeared they had no orders to intervene. At the end, they surrounded the Romanov family and herded them up the street to the Governor’s House as fast as they could. Dmitri caught sight of the Tsarina’s face and she seemed bewildered.
The following morning Trina brought a letter from Tatiana, and this time there was no pretence of cheerfulness.
The Bolshevik authorities are so incensed by the use of Papa and Mama’s titles in church that we have been banned from attending any more services. I am desolate because it was the only chance we got to step beyond the confines of the yard and my only opportunity to see you, my precious one, up close. Without that, I don’t know how I will remain optimistic.
He fingered the knitted waistcoat that had been in the parcel she slipped to him. The wool was of a rich auburn hue similar to the shade of her hair. It fitted snugly and kept him warm, almost like having her arms around him. It was lovely but at the same time it reminded him that he had no idea when – or if – he would ever feel her embrace again.
The temperature dropped still further in January, to a bitter minus twenty-nine degrees, and the skies were clear blue in the brief hours of daylight. The Romanovs built a snow mountain in the yard and enjoyed tobogganing down it when they were allowed outside. Dmitri offered to walk the smelly mongrel kept by a neighbour of his landlady’s, as it gave him an excuse to loiter outside the Governor’s House listening to their shrieks. When Tatiana stood on top of the mountain she could see over the fence and wave to him, sometimes even calling a word or two. Olga called greetings as well, and the younger children waved. There were moments when the situation almost felt normal, until the reality struck when a guard yelled at him to move along.
As he made friends in the town of Tobolsk, Dmitri realised there were many monarchists there. Hushed conversations in the town’s teahouses frequently concerned plots to rescue the Romanovs and spirit them overseas. He listened hard, then walked out to inspect waterways or cattle roads that had been mentioned as possible escape routes. Some of them seemed as though they might be useful once the thaw came. The guards around the house were careless and there were windows of opportunity when the family could have been rescued with minimal manpower.
That all changed on the 14th of February when the guards at the Governor’s House were replaced and a new, stricter regime put in place. Tatiana wrote that the old guards were accused of being too friendly with the family and the new ones were much sterner. They wasted no time in destroying the snow mountain and reducing the income the Romanovs were allowed.
‘Only 600 roubles a month,’ Tatiana complained in a letter. ‘How can anyone live on that? We shall have to let ten servants go and cut back severely on our food consumption.’
Dmitri wondered if she knew that unskilled workers in Russia earned an average of 200 roubles a year on which to feed their families? Probably not. She had likely spent as much on Ortipo’s Fabergé dog tag without a second thought. It wasn’t her fault: it was the way she had been raised. He had also grown up with servants but being in the army had made him self-sufficient, so he was able to do his own laundry and prepare an edible meal. Tatiana would not know where to start. She was a skilled nurse, though. Her talents were currently directed to looking after little Alexei, who was bedridden after a fall on the snow mountain.
I have to massage his limbs several times a day to stop him getting cramp, but unless I am very gentle it can aggravate his swollen joints and he cries out with a sound that is unbearable. He is a stoic boy but has known more pain in his short life than most know in a lifetime.
The cold seemed to linger even as the days grew longer. Dmitri filled his time by trying to plan the rescue, reading borrowed books, walking the dog, meeting friends and writing his daily letter to Tatiana.
Under the new regime she was no longer allowed to step onto the balcony or wave from the windows, so they had no way of seeing each other in the flesh but fortunately Trina was still able to transport their letters, secreting them carefully at the bottom of her basket.
Dmitri’s world shrank, just as the Romanovs’ had shrunk, just as the world of all the people of Tobolsk shrank during the winter months. And then came a communication from the outside world: a telegram from his sister Valerina. He ripped it open and felt the floor dissolve under his feet as he read: FATHER DIED OF HEART ATTACK IN PRISON STOP MOTHER AND I STAYING IN GAMEKEEPER’S COTTAGE AS HOUSE TAKEN OVER BY BOLSHEVIKS STOP.
He felt as though he had been punched in the gut. He sank to his heels and buried his face in his hands. It seemed impossible that his indomitable father could be dead, no longer breathing, eyes closed, his flesh stiff and cold. While their relationship had always been more formal than loving, Dmitri was proud of his father. He had hoped that his wedding to a grand duchess would augur a new closeness between them, when his father would learn to respect him in return – but it wasn’t to be.
Suddenly a suspicion entered his head: the general was a tough man, and very fit at just sixty years of age. Had he really suffered a heart attack or was this regime executing its high-ranking opponents? There was no way of knowing but the idea his father could have been murdered made him sick with rage.
That night in bed, the tears came and he wept with frustration that he could not travel from Tobolsk to attend the funeral and comfort his mother and sisters, that he could not pay his final respects. Through his tears he remembered his father chastising him for being too emotional. ‘Emotion is a weakness,’ he’d often said. Perhaps that was true. But Dmitri felt unbearably sad that he and his father hadn’t ever got to know each other – and now they never would.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Tobolsk, Siberia, spring 1918
In April, the ice covering the Tobol and Irtysh rivers began to thaw, great chunks breaking off with a cracking that sounded like gunfire and floating downstream before melting to slush. The first boats arrived, bringing fruits, vegetables, fuel, newspapers, and among the passengers was a new commissar tasked with the care of the Romanov family – a man of around thirty-five years of age named Vasily Yakovlev. Dmitri was slightly acquainted with him from the winter of 1916–17 when they were both at the front in Moldavia, and he knew him to be a cultured, well-connected man, despite his newfound Bolshevik credentials. He gave it a couple of days then went to the local soviet building, where the workers’ councils met, to greet him.
Yakovlev rose from behind his desk to shake Dmitri’s hand but was suspicious in his greeting. ‘What on earth brings you to this part of the world, Malama?’
Dmitri sat down. He had a story prepared. ‘I am planning to make excursions into the surrounding countryside and test for minerals. And you?’
Yakovlev smiled, clearly not believing him for a second, and answered: ‘I am in command of the Tobolsk Red Guard.’
‘How odd. Why do they need someone of your seniority in such a small town?’ Dmitri asked, all innocence. ‘Is it because the Romanovs are imprisoned here?’
‘I expect that’s the case,’ Yakovlev replied, and they exchanged a look.
There was a moment’s silence before Dmitri asked, ‘What do you think will become of them?’
Yakovlev narrowed his eyes. ‘I have heard Citizen Romanov will stand trial on charges of treason, and his wife will join him if her correspondence with Rasputin proves incriminating. Investigators are combing through letters found in his lodgings and collecting evidence that they colluded with the Germans.’