A morbid mood descended as she crouched beneath the vast twinkling sky. What difference would her death make? Tom would miss her. So would a few friends. But she had left no mark on the world. The Romanovs had their place in history, Dmitri left behind his novels and his descendants, but she had produced no children, hadn’t achieved anything of note. She had never felt so insignificant as she did at that moment.
Why had she not written a book yet? This summer by the lake would have been an ideal time but she hadn’t produced a single word. Writing was hard work and while she could force herself to do it when there was money on offer and a deadline to meet, she couldn’t imagine how authors slaved for hundreds of hours without pay, on the off-chance they might one day get published. Perhaps she simply wasn’t good enough. Maybe those with a genuine gift felt they had no choice but to write.
But if she wasn’t a writer, what was she? What talents did she have? She thought of her mother’s wish that she should study law and shuddered. That would never have worked. She had chosen journalism because English was her best subject at school, not because of any burning desire to communicate the truth or any of those worthy reasons real journalists have. Perhaps she was simply lazy, as her mum had always said. Good for nothing. Useless.
I suppose this is what they call a ‘long dark night of the soul’, she mused once her heart had stopped racing. There had been no further rustlings in the trees so she hoped whatever creature had been there had moved on. She decided to make a run for the cabin, slam the door and crawl back into bed.
As she stood up, the wood of the jetty was smooth and even beneath her feet.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Urals, Russia, September–December 1918
Every night as he lay in his bedding roll on the hard earth, Dmitri tortured himself with thoughts of the terror Tatiana must have felt when the cottage door was hacked down, the shouting, the rough handling she might have endured. He was still in shock about her disappearance.
Malevich was convinced the family were being held in Bolshevik territory to the west of the mountains, and Dmitri prayed he was right and that Tatiana was with them, but he felt sick to his stomach imagining alternative scenarios.
During the day, the discipline of military life kept him occupied: they rose at a set hour, tended their horses, ate breakfast then broke camp, before continuing across the Ural Mountains in pursuit of the Red Army. The terrain was steep and rough and already there was a hint of winter in the air. If they did not get to the other side of the vast range before the first snowfall, they could be stranded for months with no food or shelter to speak of, so they rode from dawn until well beyond dusk. He did his duty in a daze – riding reconnaissance, poring over maps, giving orders to his men – but all the time the shocking disappearance of Tatiana hammered on his consciousness.
One evening a newcomer rode into camp, and Dmitri was astonished to see a familiar face from Tobolsk: ‘Vasily Yakovlev! What on earth are you doing here?’
Yakovlev leapt from his horse and came over to greet Dmitri. ‘I couldn’t bear to watch what the Bolsheviks were doing to our people. The Red Army is a hornets’ nest of suspicion and backstabbing. If I’d stayed, I would probably have been executed by now. So I switched to the side whose cause I believe in and am fighting for the Whites.’
Dmitri regarded him with suspicion. Their camp was no stranger to spies and all had been warned to be wary about what information they passed on. Still, this man had once been a friend of sorts – and perhaps he had news of the Romanovs. Dmitri poured him a coffee and invited him to sit, introducing him to Malevich.
‘Last time we met, you were trying to save the royal family by diverting their train to Omsk. Whatever went wrong?’ he asked.
Yakovlev shook his head sadly. ‘I did my best but the railway workers took orders directly from Moscow and the matter was out of my hands. I bitterly regret that I failed, especially since the rumour is that all have now been killed.’
Dmitri’s face blanched and he sat very still. ‘What did you say?’
‘That I hear it wasn’t just Nicholas who was shot in the Ipatiev House …’ Yakovlev seemed surprised at Dmitri’s shocked reaction. ‘I’m only repeating what I’ve heard, mind. I wasn’t actually there.’
Malevich joined in. ‘I have heard the same rumour but cannot believe it. This government would lose the sympathy of all its supporters and would be condemned the world over. Perhaps Nicholas is dead – even that is in doubt given that they have not produced the body – but I’m confident we will discover the rest of the family as we march on Moscow.’
Dmitri stood and excused himself from the group, stumbling into the woods at the edge of the camp. Once out of sight he bent over and threw up violently, the bitter taste of bile scorching his throat. They can’t be dead. They simply can’t. If they were, he had failed utterly. He was directly responsible for the fate of the farm girl Yelena. He had bungled all his attempts to rescue the family. It was possible their deaths were his fault because the guards panicked when they realised that Tatiana had been freed.
Malevich appeared behind him and flung an arm around his shoulders. ‘Don’t listen to him. Stay strong.’
Dmitri looked up in despair: ‘If I discover Tatiana is dead, I cannot go on living.’
Malevich spoke sternly. ‘First of all, I simply don’t believe the Bolsheviks would be so stupid as to kill them all. And even if they did kill those in the Ipatiev House, you have no proof Tatiana was there. I firmly believe she is out here somewhere, and she’s waiting for you to find her. You owe it to her to carry on looking.’
Dmitri turned and smashed his forehead against a tree. ‘I miss her so badly. I can’t bear this agony.’ He drew his head back to smash it again and Malevich caught him by the shoulders.
‘You can and you will,’ he said firmly. ‘Imagine she is watching you, and do as she would want you to do.’
Dmitri felt the sense of his words and they gave him the strength to pull himself together. One day, if he found Tatiana, she would ask what he was doing in this period, and he hoped to be able to say he behaved with courage. He vowed he would never give up searching until he found her, wherever she might be.
At first, momentum in battle was with the White Army. With the help of arms supplied by the British government, and with a ragtag band of recruits from various different factions who were disenchanted with the Bolsheviks, Admiral Kolchak’s men marched steadily towards Moscow. As they went they liberated villages from Bolshevik control, freed prisoners and overturned socialist reforms that had been imposed. White Army morale suffered a blow in November when the British withdrew their support after signing an armistice with Germany, but the advance continued and soon Kolchak’s troops reached the River Volga, only a hundred miles east of Moscow.
By now the snow lay deep and temperatures were dropping daily. All the men stopped washing because to expose bare skin in such cold would be a sure way of catching frostbite. They requisitioned food for men and horses from farms they passed. Dmitri felt ashamed to be depriving the occupants of their winter stores, but there was no alternative if they were to free the country from the lunatics who had taken charge.