Alexandra (46 page)

But that time of retribution, as she envisioned it, would be relatively brief. When it was over, when the tsar and his family had suffered sufficiently, then the monarchy would be restored, and
Alexei would become tsar.

‘She was ready to bear everything in order that [Alexei] might come into his inheritance,’ Sophie wrote. ‘His reign should be glorious; he should institute the reforms for
which his parents would slowly prepare.’
⁴

Alix was confident of this future triumph, yet in the interim there were more humiliations to be faced.

In the first week of April the Justice Minister Kerensky had come to the Alexander Palace accompanied by an ill-assorted suite of deputies and delegates – ‘a mixed and ill-favoured
crowd,’ Sophie remembered, ‘some dressed like well-to-do workmen in black shirts, with sheepskin caps pulled well back on their heads, and some
soldiers and
sailors, the latter with hand grenades, daggers and revolvers disposed all over their persons.’
⁵

The minister was ‘abrupt and nervous’, Benckendorff thought. With the others at his heels he walked quickly through all the many rooms of the palace, including the basement, talking
very loudly and giving orders. He and his entourage searched most of the rooms in the palace thoroughly, looking in every corner, lifting up furniture and looking underneath, opening every drawer
and cupboard.
⁶
When they broke into Anya Vyrubov’s rooms, they found her burning her letters and other papers. She was arrested and taken
away.

The family waited nervously for the searching to be over. At last Kerensky summoned them into the schoolroom, where he addressed them, calling the former tsar ‘Nicholas
Alexandrovich’ and Alix ‘Alexandra Feodorovna’.

‘I am the Procurator-General, Kerensky,’ he said, shaking hands. ‘The queen of England asks for news of the ex-tsarina.’
⁷

At the words ‘ex-tsarina’, Alix’s cheeks grew red. She had not been addressed that way before. She told Kerensky that her heart was troubling her as usual.

He explained that he had come to the palace in order to see for himself how the family was living, ‘to verify everything’, so that he could make his report to his colleagues in
Petrograd. ‘It will be better for you,’ he said. He then took Nicky aside and into another room. The others, waiting, became more nervous, assuming that the Justice Minister was
delivering bad news. In fact he was telling Nicky that he still expected to be able to make arrangements for them to leave Russia, though he could not say when.

Before Kerensky left he took his entourage into Alix’s apartments, intending to search them, but then thought better of it, and decided not to go in after all. Turning abruptly around and
barking orders to the others, he left the palace.

Had the Justice Minister entered Alix’s rooms, he would not have found anything he could use to discredit her, for she had burned all her private correspondence except her husband’s
letters. Her diaries, her letters from her father and her grandmother, Nicky’s letters
written when they were first engaged, and especially every scrap of writing
about Father Gregory: everything had gone into the fire.
⁸

Alix knew that in Petrograd it was being said that she was instigating a counter-revolution. Kerensky came again to the palace, this time specifically to question her about any political
activities she was suspected of engaging in, and she answered his every question, her precision and straightforwardness impressing him. Kerensky’s tone was restrained, not hectoring. Nicky,
pacing up and down in the next room, listening for raised voices and fearing that any heated argument would lead to Alix’s imprisonment, was greatly relieved when Kerensky emerged and told
him, ‘Your wife does not lie.’
⁹

She had been in great danger, and she knew it. Had Kerensky concluded that she was communicating with outside governments, or with right-wing factions within Russia, he would surely have taken
her away to be tried – as many others that spring were being tried – and executed as an enemy of the revolution. Had she faltered in response to his questions, or been evasive, or
panicked – as many in her position would have panicked, facing Kerensky’s forceful, focused interrogation and high intelligence – she would have been lost. But she came through
the ordeal courageously, and survived.

It had been a time of testing. Yet in her own view, the time of testing came, not from the revolutionaries, but from God. ‘Once He sent us such trials, evidently He thinks we are
sufficiently prepared for it,’ she wrote to Lili Dehn. ‘It is a sort of examination – it is necessary to prove that we did not go through it in vain. One can find in everything
something good and useful.’
¹⁰
She continued to believe in ‘better times’ to come, that ‘the bad will pass and there
will be clear and cloudless sky’.

Alix’s letter to her friend was smuggled out of the palace. No letters were being allowed in, and the guards searched every package that was delivered to make certain it contained nothing
written. When Alix’s dressmaker sent her a blouse, the officers insisted that the lining be opened at the seam to reveal any hidden message. Chocolates were bitten into to expose their
centres, yogurt was stirred with a
finger to make sure there were no lumps which might turn out to contain carefully wrapped notes or valuables.

The scrutiny grew more intense as the political situation in Petrograd deteriorated. The arrival in Petrograd in April, 1917, of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who for years had led the radical
Bolshevik party from exile, aroused fresh conflict for, unlike the moderates in the Provisional Government, Lenin advocated immediate action to end the war, distribute land to the peasants, end
food shortages and bring all factories and farms under direct control of the workers and peasants.

Lenin’s Bolsheviks were few in number – perhaps twenty thousand in Petrograd and Moscow, and a similar number in the countryside. But their message soon spread. The populace had lost
confidence in the Provisional Government, and were weary of the strikes and the constant hunger and the armed clashes in the streets. Lenin seemed to offer a clear and attractive alternative. He
was blunt and decisive, his message simple and powerful. ‘All Power to the Soviets,’ the Bolshevik banners proclaimed. ‘Peace, Land and Bread.’ The radicalization of the
revolution was under way.

In June and July, 1917, the Bolsheviks continued to advocate an end to the Provisional Government, amid scenes of upheaval and violence. Troops loyal to the government fired on rioting crowds,
which gathered to protest against mounting inflation, severe food shortages and the collapse of the army. Kerensky succeeded Lvov as prime minister of a reorganized coalition cabinet, but his hold
on authority was tenuous, and the downwards slide into chaos seemed irreversible.

Kerensky came to Tsarskoe Selo in the last week of July and told Nicky that he was in great danger. ‘The Bolsheviks are after me,’ the prime minister said, ‘and then will be
after you.’
¹¹
The family was too close to Petrograd, they needed to go far away, where they would be out of reach.

They would go to Livadia, to the warm south. They would live in their beautiful white villa on the cliff, walk in their flower-filled gardens amid the scent of ripening fruit from the orchards
nearby. The Bolsheviks had not overrun Livadia. They would be safe there.

But by mid-August all had changed. It would not be Livadia, after all. They would be going east, not south, to a remote town in the Urals, or even further. They were not told exactly where, but
were cautioned to take their fur coats. It would be a cold place.

Alix, who had been longing for the warmth and peace of Livadia, was discouraged.
¹²
With an effort she gathered herself together and began to
supervise the packing.

Her wardrobes and chests were full of gowns, splendid satin court gowns, light summer gowns in fine white lawn, the black gowns she had worn since the outbreak of the war. But none of them
fitted her any more. She had grown gaunt in the five months since the revolution began. All her dresses hung limply on her thin frame, the long skirts sweeping the ground. She ordered the
chambermaids to bundle up most of the gowns, along with her many dozens of hats and pairs of gloves and silk stockings, and sent them – once they had been inspected by the soldiers – to
Polish refugees living in the village of Tsarskoe Selo and to friends in need.
¹³

So many of the accoutrements of her former life seemed gratuitous now, the cabinets of fine lace that she had so carefully catalogued, the crystal bottles of Atkinson’s White Rose perfume
and verbena toilet water, the creams that had kept her face smooth, the lotions that had softened her limbs. She needed none of these things, only what was most precious to her: her sapphire cross,
the icons and keepsakes she had from Father Gregory, mementos of her father, her brother and sisters and of Sonia Orbeliani, the pictures of Windsor from her childhood, the grey dress she had worn
the day she and Nicky became engaged, photographs and drawings by the children. All else she could dispense with.

It was part of the divine test, this discarding of what was unnecessary; part of her purging in the refiner’s fire, so that she could be cleansed and purified of all that was dross.

To be sure, she did take a quantity of jewels, not for adornment but to be used as currency if needed, or to be sold to fund a new life
abroad should they find
themselves in England or elsewhere in Europe. She had to be practical, to think ahead. There was no telling what they would find when they arrived at their new quarters. She ordered the maids to
pack sheets, pillows and feather beds, dishes, pans, table linen and storage jars. Chest after chest of household goods were filled, all the packing done quietly, out of sight of the guards
whenever possible, for Kerensky had not told the soldiers (or his colleagues in the government) that the family was leaving, and they knew that if the jailers found out, there would be an
uproar.

Finally on the night of August 13, everything was ready for the departure. All the chests and boxes were assembled, all the staff and servants who were to accompany the family were packed and
ready to go. It was a large party. Besides General Ilya Tatishchev, who was taking over as marshal of the court, and Prince Dolgorukov, there were the two doctors, Botkin and Derevenko, and Dr
Botkin’s two children, the tutor Pierre Gilliard, Mademoiselle Schneider and Anastasia Hendrikov, and a staff of chambermaids, footmen, valets, kitchen boys, and other servants – nearly
three dozen in all. The elderly Count Benckendorff was to stay behind, as was Sophie Buxhoeveden, who had been ill and who was about to undergo an operation.

From late in the evening the family and staff sat waiting for the cars that would take them to the train. Kerensky had said they would leave at around midnight, but one o’clock came and
still the cars had not arrived. Alexei sat on a box, ‘green with fatigue’, Sophie Buxhoeveden thought, holding his spaniel Joy. Nicky chatted with General Tatishchev and Prince
Dolgorukov and the doctors. He was allowed a brief, upsetting visit with his brother Michael, who was not permitted to see anyone else in the family.

Every half-hour or so the cars were announced, but did not arrive, though the chests and boxes and luggage were taken away, one by one. As the hours passed the continual delay was nerveracking.
Tired and sad, Alix wrote a sombre farewell note to Sophie. ‘What shall the future bring to my poor children?’ she wrote. ‘My heart breaks thinking of them.’
¹⁴

In actuality the delay was an indication of danger. The soldiers had discovered that Kerensky was ordering the transport of the Romanovs to safety in an eastern Russian
location, and they immediately called a meeting in the barracks. In keeping with the prevailing climate of decision-making by committee, they debated whether or not the family ought to be permitted
to leave the palace. It was a tug-of-war between Kerensky’s authority and the collectivist mentality of the men, and it took all of the prime minister’s persuasiveness to restrain the
soldiers from taking matters into their own hands.

For five hours, until nearly six o’clock in the morning, the arguments went back and forth, with Kerensky’s harangues eventually wearing down the resistance.
¹⁵
During that time, Sophie thought, Alix ‘had seen her life at Tsarskoe [Selo] passing before her’, and she had given way to tears.

‘The Empress’s face was ashy white as she went out of the door of her home for the last time,’ Sophie wrote. ‘Count Benckendorff and I were left alone on the steps to see
them drive away.’ Alix wrote to Sophie later that, seeing her two friends standing there on the palace steps, leaning against the wall for support, she felt their desolation, and no doubt it
increased her own.

The sight of the two faithful members of her household, her staunch lady-in-waiting and the frail old marshal who had stood by her so loyally in recent months, moved her to tears. As the car
moved forwards, taking her away from the palace, she felt fresh sorrow, knowing that she might never see any of those she was leaving behind, or her home, ever again.