Anastasia had never seen her mother so bereaved. At the news of Father Grigori’s murder, she had utterly broken down, fearing that her son Alexei had lost his most potent protector. And when she learned that the deed had been done by Prince Yussoupov and, worse yet, Grand Duke Dmitri, a Romanov relation, she had almost lost her wits altogether. Anastasia and her three older sisters had taken turns watching over their mother.
Looking out the window now, Ana saw endless, snow-covered fields, lined by white birches and punctuated, like print on a white page, by scribbles of crows. It was a beautiful morning, with a sun so bright and a sky so blue Fabergé himself might have enameled the scene. Icicles hanging from the eaves of the occasional farmhouse glistened like diamonds. Under her own blouse, Ana wore the emerald cross the monk had given her at the Christmas ball. That was the last time she had seen him alive, and she had not taken off the cross ever since.
The body itself had not remained hidden for long. In their haste, the conspirators had left one of Rasputin’s boots lying out on the ice of the frozen Neva. The corpse had floated not far off, and when another hole was cut through the ice to retrieve it, the starets was found to have been alive even after being submerged in the river. One of his arms had wriggled free of the ropes and was frozen stiff as if raised in a benediction, and his lungs were filled with water. For all the poison in his bloodstream, the bullets in his body, and the bruises from the beating, the monk had died in the end by drowning.
Once the cars had entered the park, and the Cossack guards had closed the gates and resumed their endless patrols again, Anastasia saw that wooden walkways had been built across a frozen field. The cars stopped, and Tsar Nicholas himself stepped out of the first one, his wife leaning heavily on the arm of her close friend, Madame Vyrubova. The Tsaritsa Alexandra was dressed entirely in black, as were they all, but carried in her arms a bouquet of white roses plucked that morning from the greenhouse at the Winter Palace.
In the distance, a motor van was parked by an open grave, its engine still running, a plume of gray smoke rising from its exhaust. As Anastasia drew closer, picking her way carefully over the freshly placed boards, she saw the foot of a coffin—a simple one, made of white oak—resting in the back of the van. Her mother went straight to it and asked one of the attendants to open it.
Looking uncertain, the attendant glanced at the Tsar, who nodded.
The lid was lifted, and though Ana was standing far back with her sisters, she caught a glimpse of the holy man’s black beard, stiffly brushed … and a ragged hole in his head, above his left eye, as if someone had drilled his skull with an augur. His broad hands, once so full of power and expression, were folded meekly against the shoulders of his black cassock.
All in all, it was the most shocking sight Ana had ever seen … but she did not quail, even as her sister Tatiana let out a whimper and Olga consoled her. In Ana’s head, all she could hear were the words Rasputin had spoken to her in the chapel.
“If any relation to your family takes my life, then woe to the dynasty. The Russian people will rise against you with murder in their hearts.”
And not only had Grand Duke Dmitri participated in the murder, he had bragged about it the next day.
“The blood of your family is poisoned,” the monk had said. “But this curse you carry in your veins will be your own salvation one day. A plague shall overwhelm the world, but you shall be proof against it.”
Ana still had no idea what these last words betokened. But she wore the emerald cross he had given her, with its secret inscription on the back, nonetheless.
Her mother handed the white roses to her friend and placed two objects on Rasputin’s breast. One was an icon that everyone in the imperial family had inscribed, and the other was a letter that she had dictated to Anastasia because her own hand was too unsteady. “My dear martyr,” it had read, “give me thy blessing that it may follow me always on the sad and dreary path I have yet to follow here below. And remember us from on high in your holy prayers.” Ana had held the letter for her mother to sign. Lifting herself from the divan, where the pain from her sciatica had once again relegated her, her mother had written “Alexandra” with her usual flourish, before pressing the page first to her heart, then to her lips.
Now, the letter, too, was lying on Father Grigori’s breast. The attendants closed and sealed the coffin, and it was lowered into the grave. A chaplain read the funeral service, but Ana was listening only to the sound of the winter wind as it rustled through the creaky scaffolding of the church being built close by. She looked at her family, standing silent and still in their black coats and boots and hats, all in a row, and it was as if she were looking at a photograph. A grim photograph that made her think of the monk’s dire prophecy again.
“Here,” Madame Vyrubova said, softly, “take this.” She handed Ana some of the white roses. And then, after her mother and father and sisters had cast their own into the open grave, Ana dropped hers, too, watching the petals flutter like snowflakes onto the lid of the coffin.