He looked up slowly and stared at me, as if he did not know who I was for a moment. A thin smile appeared on his face, then vanished just as quickly.
‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘What time is it?’
‘Almost three o’clock,’ I replied, glancing at the ornate clock on the wall behind him.
‘I thought it was still morning,’ he said quietly.
I opened my mouth to reply, but could think of no suitable response. I wished that Dr Federov was there, for I had never seen the Tsar look so ill before. His face was grey and had aged considerably. The skin on his forehead had become dry and flaky, while his hair, usually so lustrous and shiny, had grown greasy and lank. The air in the study was stale and I felt so claustrophobic that I immediately walked to a window to open it.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked, looking across at me.
‘Letting some air in,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you’d feel better if—’
‘Keep it closed.’
‘But don’t you find it stuffy in here?’ I asked, placing my hands on the base of the window and preparing to raise it.
‘Keep it closed!’ he shouted, startling me, and I turned around immediately to look at him.
‘I’m sorry, Your Majesty,’ I said, swallowing nervously.
‘Have things changed so much here that I have to give an order twice?’ he snapped, his eyes narrowing as he stared at me with the look of a fox preparing to take a rabbit. ‘If I say keep it closed, then you will keep it closed. Is that understood?’
‘Of course,’ I replied, nodding my head. ‘I apologize, sir.’
‘I’m still the Tsar,’ he added.
‘You will always—’
‘I had a dream earlier, Georgy,’ he said, looking away from me now and addressing an invisible audience; his tone had changed in an instant from anger to nostalgia. ‘Well, it wasn’t so much a
dream as a memory. The day that I became Tsar. My father wasn’t even fifty when he died, did you know that? I didn’t think my turn would come for …’ He shrugged his shoulders and considered it. ‘Well, for many years anyway. There were some who said I wasn’t ready. But they were wrong. I had been preparing for that moment all my life. It’s a curious thing, Georgy, to be able to fulfil one’s destiny only when one loses one’s father. And I was devastated after my father died. He was a monster, of course. But still, I took his death hard. You never knew your father, did you?’
‘I did, sir,’ I replied. ‘I told you about him once.’
‘Oh yes,’ he said, waving me away. ‘I forgot. Well, my father was a very difficult man, there’s no doubt about that. But he was nothing compared to my mother. God save you from a mother like mine.’
I frowned and looked over at the open door which led towards the train’s corridor. It was empty still and I wished that someone would appear and relieve me. I had never heard the Tsar speak in this way before, and I hated hearing his voice so filled with self-pity and disillusionment. It was as if he had turned into one of those morose drunks that one encounters on the street late at night, full of resentment towards those they think have destroyed their lives, desperate for someone to listen to their melancholic stories.
‘I married Sunny only a week after he died,’ he continued, tapping his fingers on the desk before him rhythmically. ‘It seems like a different time entirely. When we entered Moscow to be crowned, the crowds … they came from all over Russia to see us. They loved us then, you see. It doesn’t seem so very long ago, but it is, I suppose. More than twenty years. It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?’
I smiled and nodded, although in truth it seemed like a very long time to me. I was only eighteen years old, after all, and had never known a Russia without Nicholas II at the head of it. Twenty years was more than a lifetime – more than my own, anyway.
‘You shouldn’t be here today,’ he said a moment later, standing up and staring at me. ‘I’m sorry I brought you.’
‘Would you like me to leave, sir?’ I asked.
‘No, that’s not what I meant.’ His voice suddenly rose and became plaintive. ‘Why do people continually misunderstand me? I only meant that it was unfair of me to bring you to this place. It’s only because I trust you. Can you understand that, Georgy?’
I nodded, unsure what he wanted of me. ‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘And I’m grateful for it.’
‘I thought that if you had saved the life of one Romanov named Nicholas, then perhaps you would have it in you to save another. A superstitious fancy. But I was wrong, wasn’t I?’
‘Your Majesty, no assassin will come near you while I am here.’
He laughed at this and shook his head. ‘That wasn’t what I meant either,’ he said. ‘Not what I meant at all.’
‘But you said—’
‘You can’t save me, Georgy. No one can. I should have sent you to Tsarskoe Selo. It’s beautiful there, isn’t it?’
I swallowed and was about to suggest that he still could – after all, that was where Anastasia was – but I held my tongue. This was no time to desert him. I might have been a boy, but I was man enough to know that.
‘Sir, you seem distressed,’ I said, stepping towards him now. ‘Is there anything … perhaps if we were all to leave this place? The train has been standing here for two days now. We’re in the middle of nowhere, sir.’
He laughed at this and shook his head as he settled on to a settee. ‘The middle of nowhere,’ he repeated. ‘You’re right about that.’
‘I could send one of the soldiers to the nearest town for a doctor.’
‘Why would I want a doctor? I’m not ill.’
‘But sir …’
‘Georgy,’ he said, massaging the dark rings beneath his eyes with his fingers, ‘General Ruzsky will be coming back here in a few minutes. Do you know why he is visiting me?’
‘No, sir,’ I replied, shaking my head. The General had spent most of the afternoon with the Tsar. I had not been present for any of their conversations but had heard raised voices through the woodwork and then, finally, silence. When the General had left, he had rushed off with an expression that betrayed both anxiety and relief. I had left the Tsar alone with his thoughts for almost an hour since then, but had grown concerned for him and had stepped inside to see whether there was anything he needed.
‘He’s bringing some papers for me to sign,’ he said. ‘When I sign these papers, a great change will take place in Russia. Something that I never imagined could possibly happen. Not in my lifetime.’
‘Yes, sir,’ I replied, a standard response, for even when the Tsar spoke in such a way it was considered ill-mannered to question him. One was obliged to wait for him to offer more information.
‘You have heard about the Winter Palace, of course?’
‘No, Your Majesty,’ I said, shaking my head.
‘It has been taken,’ he said, smiling a little. ‘The government. Your government.
My
government. They have taken it from me. It’s under the rule of the Duma now, I am told. Who knows what will become of it? A few years from now and it will be a hotel, perhaps. Or a museum. Our state rooms will be souvenir shops. Our parlours will be used to sell tea-cakes and seed-buns.’
‘That could never happen,’ I said, shocked to imagine the palace under the control of anyone but him. ‘It is your home.’
‘But I have no home any more. There’s no place for me in St Petersburg, that’s for sure. If I was even to think about going back—’
A tap on the door interrupted his speech and I glanced towards it, then back at the Tsar; he sighed heavily before nodding and I stepped across to open it. General Ruzsky was standing on the other side with a heavy parchment in his hand. A thin man with
grey hair and a bushy black moustache, he had been coming and going from the train ever since we had stopped here a couple of days earlier and had never once acknowledged me, despite the fact that I had been on hand throughout most of his dealings with the Tsar. Even now he brushed past me without a word and stepped quickly into the study, nodding quickly at Nicholas before placing the document before him. I turned to leave, but as I did so, the Tsar looked over and raised his hand.
‘Don’t go, Georgy,’ he said. ‘I think we will need a witness to this. Isn’t that so, General?’
‘Well … yes, sir,’ replied the General gruffly, looking me up and down as if he had never seen such a poor specimen of humanity before. ‘But I hardly think a bodyguard is the appropriate person, do you? I can fetch one of my lieutenants.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said the Tsar. ‘Georgy will do just as well. Sit down,’ he said to me and I took a seat in the corner of the carriage, doing my best to remain inconspicuous. ‘Now, General,’ he said finally, scanning the document carefully, ‘it says everything that we agreed upon?’
‘Yes, sir,’ replied Ruzsky, taking a seat now too. ‘All it requires is your signature.’
‘And my family? They will be kept safe?’
‘Currently they are being protected by the army of the provisional government at Tsarskoe Selo,’ he said carefully. ‘No harm shall come to them, I promise you that.’
‘And my wife,’ said the Tsar, his voice breaking a little. ‘You guarantee her safety?’
‘But of course. She is still the Tsaritsa.’
‘Yes, she is,’ replied the Tsar, smiling now. ‘For now. I note, General, that you say they are “being protected”. Is that a euphemism for being imprisoned?’
‘Their status has yet to be decided, sir,’ replied the General, and I found myself shocked by his response. Who was he to speak to the Tsar like this? It was outrageous. And I hated the idea of
Anastasia being watched over by any members of the provisional government. She was an Imperial Grand Duchess, after all, the daughter, the granddaughter, the great-granddaughter of God’s anointed ones.
‘There is one other matter,’ said the Tsar after a long pause. ‘Since we last spoke, I have had a change of mind on one thing.’
‘Sir, we have discussed this,’ said the General in a tired voice. ‘There is no way that—’
‘No, no,’ said the Tsar, shaking his head. ‘It’s not what you think. It relates to the succession.’
‘The succession? But you have already decided on that. You will abdicate in favour of your son, the Tsarevich Alexei.’
I shot forward in my seat at these words and it was all that I could do not to let out a cry of horror. Could it really be so? Was the Tsar about to renounce his throne? Of course he was, I realized quickly. I had known it would come to this. We all had. I had just been unwilling to face up to it.
‘We … and by “we” I mean my immediate family – my wife, my children and I—’ said the Tsar, ‘we will be sent into exile after the instrument is invoked, will we not?’
The General hesitated for only a moment, but then nodded his head. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘Yes, it will be impossible to guarantee your safety in Russia. Your relatives in Europe, perhaps …’
‘Yes, yes,’ said the Tsar dismissively. ‘Cousin Georgie and that lot. I know they’ll look after us. But if Alexei were to be Tsar, then he would be forced to remain behind in Russia? Without his family?’
‘Again, that is the most likely outcome.’
The Tsar nodded. ‘Then I wish to add a clause to the document. I wish to renounce not only my own claim to the throne, but also that of my son. The crown can pass to my brother Michael instead.’
The General sat back and stroked his moustache for a moment.
‘Your Majesty,’ he said, ‘do you think that is wise? Does the boy not deserve a chance to—’
‘The boy,’ snapped the Tsar, ‘as you very clearly state it, is just a boy. He is only twelve years old. And he is not well. I cannot allow him to be separated from Sunny and me. Make the change, General, and I will sign your document. Then perhaps I will have a little peace. I deserve at least that much after all these years, don’t you agree?’
General Ruzsky hesitated for only a moment before nodding his head and scratching away at the page while the Tsar stared out of the window. I focussed my eyes directly on him, hoping that he would perhaps feel my gaze and look towards me, so that I might offer some small semblance of support, but he did not turn back until the General muttered something to him. He quickly took the paper, looked it over and signed it.
We all remained very still after this, until the Tsar stood up.
‘You may leave now,’ he said quietly. ‘Both of you, please.’
The General and I made for the door and closed it behind us.
Inside, the last Tsar was left to his thoughts, his memories and his regrets.
1922
M
Y PARISIAN EMPLOYER
, Monsieur Ferré, was not pleased with my continued absences from work, but he waited until the last customer had left the shop before taking me aside to make his displeasure clear. He had been behaving in a disgruntled fashion throughout the day, offering a series of sarcastic comments about my time-keeping and refusing to allow me my regular afternoon break on the grounds that he had been too lenient with me as it was. I tried to engage him in conversation in the late afternoon, but he brushed me aside with the ease that one swats a fly hovering around one’s head and stated quite flatly that he had no time for me at that moment, that he was completing his monthly accounts and would speak with me later in the evening, when the store was closed. Not looking forward to our conversation, I busied myself in the history section of the bookshop at the appointed time and pretended to be so engrossed in my work as not to hear him when he called my name. Finally, he marched around the corner, discovered me shelving a series of volumes on the history of French military costume, and practically spat on the ground in irritation.
‘Jachmenev,’ he said, ‘didn’t you hear me calling for you?’
‘My apologies, sir,’ I replied, standing up and brushing the dust of the books off my trousers; my knees buckled slightly beneath me as I tried to right myself, for the gaps between the stacks were astonishingly narrow. Monsieur Ferré made a point of keeping as much stock as possible on the premises, but the result of this was that the books were crammed too tightly together upon the shelves, and the proximity of the bookcases made it almost
impossible for more than one person to inspect them at any one time. ‘I was absorbed in what I was doing,’ I added, ‘but there was—’