Dmitri glanced out the window. ‘Perhaps there will be a clue to where they have gone. I’ll go and take a look.’
He hurried across the road and joined a group going through the main gate. He knew the layout from the map Yelena had drawn, and headed up to the first floor then along to the bedroom the four girls had shared. Muted sunlight shone through the whitewashed windows and the air was stale and sour. Their four camp beds remained, the covers rumpled. On the floor lay odd items: a toothbrush, a prayer book, a needle and thread. He picked up the prayer book and saw Maria’s name written inside. She must have forgotten it. A middle-aged peasant woman pulled a picture of the Holy Mother from the wall and clutched it like a prize. Dmitri searched through the other items lying around but did not find anything to indicate where the family might have gone. All that was clear was that they had left in a hurry. It felt strange and wrong to be in the girls’ bedroom.
Next door was the Tsar and Tsarina’s bedroom, with Alexei’s bed at the foot of theirs, and the same scattering of personal items: bibles, images of saints, some porcelain dominoes. On the floor was the book Tales of Shakespeare, which Tatiana had mentioned she was reading to Alexei. He walked through the rooms occupied by Alexei’s doctor and Alexandra’s maid, the dining room in which the family ate their meals round a small carved oak table, the bathroom and water closet that all were forced to share. It was so cramped and uncomfortable he couldn’t bear to think of Tatiana living there. The guard posts were connected by wires with bells on them, bells that Tatiana had told him the family had been forced to ring when they wanted to visit the water closet. It was intolerable that a royal family’s bodily functions had been so closely observed.
The house had a horrible atmosphere that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He hurried down the stairs to look around the ground floor where the guards had spent their time. No papers or telegrams gave any indication of the family’s fate; drawers were empty, the walls cleared of notices. He walked out into the courtyard and round to look for the door to the basement but it was bolted shut. He rattled it but it wouldn’t budge.
It was good to be in the fresh air again. Dmitri felt as though he were choking. Where were the Romanovs? Where was Tatiana? This ‘house of special purpose’ was offering no clues.
A few days later, Malevich arrived at the cottage and greeted Dmitri with a bear hug. ‘You look terrible, my friend. Have you not been sleeping? Phew …’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘I can tell you have not been bathing.’
True enough, Dmitri couldn’t remember when he last washed.
‘I don’t know what to do with myself,’ he shook his head. ‘I’ve searched everywhere. How can they have vanished into thin air?’
‘We will find them,’ Malevich promised. ‘I heard they might be on the other side of the Urals, perhaps in Perm. There is talk of a sealed train that left Ekaterinburg in the early hours of the seventeeth and I’m willing to bet they were on it. The White Army is headed in that direction. Why not join us?’
Dmitri blinked hard. ‘But what if Tatiana comes looking for me here? I can’t risk missing her.’
‘We will leave word of our plans with Sir Thomas. He will let you know if Tatiana returns to Ekaterinburg.’ Malevich squeezed his shoulders. ‘You are a great soldier, a brave man. The best thing you can do for the Romanovs is to free their country from the Bolshevik scourge and turn it back into the motherland we know and love.’ He paused then added: ‘You know it’s what Tatiana would urge you to do.’
‘What if the family are found while I am stuck fighting somewhere?’
‘When they are found, I expect you will grab the nearest horse and ride off in a cloud of dust, not stopping until you have reached them.’
Dmitri nodded, his throat so tight it was impossible to speak. He would go with Malevich; it was better than doing nothing. Only by keeping busy could he hold at bay the terrible sense of doom that threatened to engulf him completely.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Lake Akanabee, New York State, late September 2016
It was a blazing hot day but Kitty shivered as she lay on the shore by her cabin reading about the murder of the Romanovs on the night of the 16th–17th of July, 1918. The account was based on a statement given by Yurovsky, the chief executioner, so was as close to the truth as would ever emerge.
It was around one-thirty when Eugene Botkin, the family doctor, was wakened by Yurovsky. He said that the situation was unstable as the Czech Army drew closer and that the Romanovs should be wakened and told to come down to the basement for their own safety until they could be moved elsewhere.
The family took forty minutes to pull on their clothes: Nicholas and Alexei in soldiers’ tunics and Alexandra and the girls in white blouses and skirts. They were carrying small bags and seemed calm. Nicholas turned to the servants and remarked ‘Well, it seems at last we are getting out of this place.’ When Alexandra asked about their possessions, Yurovsky assured her everything would be packed up and sent on.
Kitty knew there had been a false alarm when they had thought they were being moved a couple of days earlier so perhaps they weren’t sure if this was another one.
At 2.15 a.m., Yurovsky led the party of ten down the darkened staircase to the ground floor then out into the courtyard. Nicholas carried Alexei in his arms. Another door led down twenty-three steps to a basement and they were ushered into a bare room with an unshaded light bulb hanging from the ceiling.
Alexandra immediately asked for chairs: she could not stand for long because of her sciatica, and Alexei was too weak to stand at all. Two chairs were brought, and Yurovsky asked the girls and the servants to stand behind the Tsar and Tsarina, almost as if he were posing them for a photograph. He said a truck was coming to take them to safety, then left them alone while he went to check on the arrangements.
They must have been sleepy, Kitty thought, after being roused from their beds. None of them seemed unduly alarmed. Did they whisper amongst themselves? Perhaps they speculated on where their next destination might be.
Next door the guards sat drinking vodka and nervously checking their weapons. The Fiat truck Yurovsky had ordered pulled into the courtyard and, after checking it, at 2.45 a.m. he led his eight co-conspirators into the room where the Romanovs waited. They were alarmed to see faces they did not recognise, but hearing the truck outside, must have imagined their departure was imminent. Nicholas asked, ‘What are you going to do now?’
Yurovsky produced a sheet of paper and began to read: ‘In view of the fact that your relatives in Europe continue their assault on Soviet Russia, the presidium of the Regional Soviet, fulfilling the will of the Revolution, has decreed that the former Tsar Nicholas Romanov, guilty of countless bloody crimes against the people, should be shot …
Kitty tried to imagine the terror and confusion in the room. No one could have expected that, even after all the months of captivity. What kind of nation would execute their monarch without a trial?