The Romanov Sisters (Four Sisters) (56 page)

of the soldiers guarding them persisted in referring to Nicholas as

the tsar or ex-tsar, and one officer, it was said, was dismissed ‘after being caught kissing the hand of the Grand Duchess Tatiana’, but

these were exceptions. Other cruel gestures served only to hurt: the

children’s rowing boat was soiled with excrement and graffiti, and

out in the park Alexey’s pet goat was shot and the pet deer and

swans too – probably for food.24

Many found Nicholas’s extraordinary passivity in the face of insult

disturbing: ‘The Tsar felt nothing; he was neither kind nor cruel;

merry nor morose; he had no more sensibility than some of the

lowest forms of life. “A human oyster” is how the later commandant,

Evgeny Kobylinsky, would describe him.’25 As for Alexandra,

Elizaveta Naryshkina found her conversation increasingly disjointed

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and incomprehensible. No doubt the constant headaches and dizzy

spells as ever impinged on it, but Elizaveta had by now come to the

conclusion that Alexandra’s unbalanced mental state had become

‘pathological’. ‘It should serve to acquit her’, should it come to the worst, she hoped, ‘and perhaps will be her only salvation.’26 Dr

Botkin agreed with her: ‘He now feels as I do when seeing the state

the empress is in and berates himself for not having realized it

sooner.’

Inside the palace much had changed. ‘Along the wide corridors

covered with thick soft carpets, where formerly efficient, silent servants glided noiselessly, throngs of soldiers now reeled, with coats

unbuttoned, in muddy shoes, caps on the side of their heads,

unshaved, often drunk, and always noisy.’27 Visitors to the family

were strictly forbidden (although members of the entourage were

occasionally allowed to see their relatives). Use of the telephone or telegraph was forbidden and the family was ordered to speak Russian

at all times. Correspondence was vetted by Kotzebue, who having

served with Alexandra’s Uhlans was sympathetic and often allowed

letters through without the formal checks being made. But he was

soon replaced, and letters were later even tested for invisible ink.28

The family was still allowed to celebrate religious services on Sundays and high holidays, led by Father Belyaev from the Feodorovsky

Sobor, who held them in a field chapel erected behind a screen in

the corner of an upstairs room.29

Although it was mid-March Maria was still very sick and Anastasia

had developed such acute earache that her eardrums had had to be

pierced to relieve the pressure in them.30 And then on the 15th

Anastasia developed a secondary infection – pleurisy – on a day

when Maria’s temperature hit almost 105 degrees F (40.6 degrees

C). Both children were prostrated by fits of terrible coughing.31 In

a letter to Rita Khitrovo, Tatiana wrote that Anastasia wasn’t able

to eat either, ‘because it all comes back again’. Both her sisters, she said, were ‘very patient and lie quietly. Anastasia is still deaf and you have to shout so that she can hear what you’re saying to her.’

Her own hearing was much better, although she was still having

problems with her right ear. She couldn’t say much more: ‘Remember

that they are reading your and my letters.’32

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By the 18th Maria was so ill that Alexandra sent Anna Vyrubova

an anxious note, fearful that she was dying. Anastasia too was ‘in a

critical condition, lungs and ears being in a sad state of inflamma-

tion’. ‘Oxygen alone was keeping the children alive’, administered

by a doctor who had come out voluntarily from Petrograd to attend

them.33 It was not until 20 March that Anastasia and Maria’s temper-

atures finally began to drop. They were at last over the worst, much

to their parents’ relief, though were still very weak and sleeping a

lot.34 Alexey was recovering too and Tatiana, the most robust of all

the children, was much better. But Olga still seemed very under par.

There was now a new palace commandant – Pavel Korovichenko

– who was introduced to the family on 21 March by Kerensky when

he arrived on an inspection. Before leaving that day, Kerensky

announced that Anna Vyrubova was to be removed. The stigma of

her previous close association with Rasputin was still bringing with

it accusations of her being involved in ‘political plots’ against the new regime.35 Her presence at the palace, it was felt, served only to inflame revolutionary hatred of the imperial family. To lose Anna

was a disaster for an emotionally drained Alexandra, but even worse

was Kerensky’s decision to take her other close friend Lili Dehn

away too. Before Lili left Alexandra hung a small icon round her

neck as a blessing and Tatiana rushed in with a small leather photo-

graph case containing photos of her parents – taken from her own

bedside table. ‘If Kerensky
is
going to take you away from us, you shall at least have Papa and Mama to console you’, she said, and

then she turned to Anna and begged for ‘a last memory’ of her as

a keepsake. Anna gave her the only thing she had – her wedding

ring.36

Lili was still wearing her nurse’s uniform when she and Anna

were taken out to the waiting cars. Alexandra and Olga seemed calm

and impassive as they left, but Tatiana was openly sobbing – ‘this

the girl whom history had since described as “proud and reserved”’,

but on this occasion, as Lili remembered, ‘ma[king] no secret of her

grief’. Both women were heartbroken to be so unjustly and forcibly

removed after so many years of loyal service to the family; Anna,

still weak both from the measles and the injuries sustained in her

accident, could barely walk, even with the help of crutches. As their
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car drove away in the rain, Anna could just make out ‘a group of

white-clad figures crowded close to the nursery windows’ watching

them go. From Tsarskoe Selo the two women were taken to the

Palace of Justice in Petrograd; here after being held for two days

in a freezing cold room with little food Lili was allowed to go home

to her sick son Titi.37 But Anna was transferred to the notorious

Trubetskoy Bastion of the Peter and Paul Fortress where she was

held for interrogation and not released until July.

With all the children recovered, the family still nursed the hope

that it would be allowed to go into temporary exile and on 23 March

Nicholas noted that he had been going through his books and papers,

packing up everything he might wish to take with him ‘if we should

leave for England’.38 But Lent came and there was still no news.

Father Belyaev was allowed to come and stay at the Alexander Palace

to conduct services, albeit closely observed at all times by the highly suspicious members of the guard. On Saturday 25 March Anastasia

got up for the first time and joined the family for lunch. The

following morning, Palm Sunday, she sat down and wrote what was

probably her first letter since her illness; and she wrote it to the

person closest to her favourite officer – Viktor Zborovsky’s sister,

Katya.

Like her sisters Rimma and Xenia, Katya had been serving as a

nurse during the war, at Feodorovsky Gorodok.39 Three years older

than Anastasia, she had sometimes been brought out from St

Petersburg to play with her when they were younger and had become

a close friend, thanks to their common bond with her brother Viktor.

During the war, all four Romanov sisters often sent gifts to their

Escort favourites – especially hand-knitted items of warm clothing

to take to the front. They also treasured their photographs of Vitya

(Viktor), Shurik (Alexander Shvedov) and Skvorchik (Mikhail

Skvortsov) taken at tea parties at Anna Vyrubova’s. After they were

shut up in the Alexander Palace the girls were desperate to stay in

touch with the Escort and Katya became the conduit, allowed a pass

into the palace to come and deliver and fetch letters.40

Until now Anastasia had been something of a sluggish letter

writer compared to her sisters, but with little to do she began writing regularly to Katya in order to have news of Viktor. ‘Tatiana asks me

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to send this blanket for Makyukho [one of the officers] for his young son’, she wrote on the 26 March:

He apparently is her godson. What is his name? Give the

remaining socks and shirts to your brother and he can hand them

out to his colleagues. We are sorry there aren’t enough for

everyone, but we are sending all we have left. At the bottom of

these two boxes is written which item is to be given to our former

wounded. Maria is still ill, but I got up yesterday, and am very

glad about that, as I had been confined to bed for about four

weeks, though I am still weak in the legs.

Please ask your brother again to return the group [photo-

graphs] that we sent you last time. We think of you all often and

send huge greetings. Write and tell us sometimes, dear Katya

how everyone is and so on, we are always so happy to have news.

Jim [her dog] is well and happy.
*
Send my best to Sidorov.

Warmest greetings to your mother and brother. All the best! I

kiss you warmly, Your Anastasia. These little icons are from

mother for all the officers.41

At a time when such simple acts of friendship and remembrance

preoccupied the four sisters, a positive ‘outpouring of venom’ against the imperial family was filling the Petrograd press. Some of it took

the form of lurid cartoons of the former tsar and tsaritsa – of

Alexandra reclining in a bath full of blood, or Nicholas watching

mass hangings – or featured descriptions of elaborate, bloated meals

of caviar, lobster and sturgeon gorged on by the imperial family

while Petrograd starved.

There was a cartoon of the Emperor lighting a cigarette with a

hundred-rouble note. There was a nauseating story about ‘the

proof’ that Grand-Duke Alexis was the son of [Monsieur]

Philippe. There were sketches of the young grand-duchesses’

‘private’ lives written by their ‘lovers’.42

* The dog has often been named elsewhere as Jem or Jemmy but the Katya letters confirm its name as above. There has also been discussion – based perhaps on the faulty recall of Anna Vyrubova – that Jim belonged to Tatiana, but again Anastasia’s letters to Katya make abundantly clear that the dog was hers.

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‘The joint excesses of Nero, Caligula, the Sforzas and the Borgias

would have suggested a mild nursery-story’ in comparison with the

lurid press accounts that Edith Almedingen remembered reading

that spring. Yet still the accusations against Nicholas and Alexandra escalated, so much so that on 27 March, during the judicial investigation into Anna Vyrubova, Kerensky ordered that the couple

should be separated in order to prevent collusion between them,

should any trial ensue. For the next three weeks they were allowed

to meet only twice daily at meals, Nicholas appearing almost glad

to escape his wife’s draining presence for a while.43
*
They adhered strictly to the new rules imposed on them, fearing that if they did

not one or both of them might be taken away, like Anna, to the

Peter and Paul Fortress. Kerensky had actually wanted to separate

Alexandra from the children, confining them with their father, but

Elizaveta Naryshkina had appealed saying this was too cruel: ‘It

would mean death to her. Her children are her life.’44 It was as well that Kerensky relented, for on 27 March Olga was back in bed again

with swollen glands and a sore throat; once more her temperature

climbed to nearly 104 degrees F (40 degrees C).45 On 4 April

Alexandra noted that her daughter was now suffering from ‘inflam-

mation around the heart’.46

Over Easter weekend the entire household, including the

remaining servants, were grateful to be allowed to pray together,

though at one stage Belyaev had had to contend with a noisy funeral

service being held in the park outside for supposed ‘victims of the

Revolution’– in fact, those killed during wine-shop rioting and

pillaging in the town a few days previously.47 All five children had

made confession to him on Good Friday, Olga in bed and Maria in

a wheelchair, and was impressed by their ‘mildness, restraint [and]

obedience to their parents’ wishes’. They seemed to him so innocent,

so ‘ignorant of worldly filth’.48 The late night communion service

for
Velikaya Subbota
(Great Saturday) on 1 April was especially poignant for everyone (though Olga and Maria were too sick to

attend). Afterwards eighteen sat down at table to break the fast.

* On 12 April this ruling was overturned and they were allowed to share a bedroom again.

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There was a huge Easter
kulich
,
decorated eggs, ham and veal, sausage and vegetables, but for Iza Buxhoeveden it was ‘a dismal