The Romanov Sisters (Four Sisters) (65 page)

considerable credit with the shopkeepers of Tobolsk and could no

longer sustain such a large household. There was nothing for it

distinguish which they were using. For the sake of clarity, all dates from 14

February 1918 are New Style.

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– they would have to let ten servants go. This caused the family

considerable distress, as many of those servants had brought their

families to join them and, as Gilliard rightly noted, their devotion

to the imperial family in following them to Tobolsk would ‘reduce

them to beggary’.75 In the end, several insisted on staying, for no

pay.From 1 March, in addition to the tightening of the budget,

everyone was put on rations, just like the rest of the country. Nicholas Romanov, ‘ex-emperor’, of Freedom Street, with six dependants,

was issued with ration card no. 54 for flour, butter and sugar.76

Coffee (which Alexandra depended upon) was now virtually unob-

tainable. But once again, gifts of food began to arrive ‘from various kind people who have heard about our need to economize on our

outgoings for food’, wrote Nicholas; he found the generosity of the

donors ‘so touching!’77 In response Alexandra painted little icons on paper to send as gifts of thanks. A few days later one of Nicholas’s

old staff members at Mogilev arrived in Tobolsk with a gift of 25,000

roubles from monarchist friends in Petrograd, as well as books and

tea.78 But it was not just food rationing that hit everyone hard; they could not replace their increasingly threadbare clothes. By March

Alexandra was grateful for any parcels of clothing from Anna

Vyrubova that reached them: warm jumpers and jackets for the last

of the chill weather, blouses and hats for the spring, and a military suit, vest and trousers for Alexey. From Odessa Zinaida Tolstaya

sent a wonderful parcel of perfume, sweets, crayons, albums, icons

and books, although several others she sent never arrived.79

Everyone drew further in on themselves as the strictures of Lent

approached. Alexandra and the girls were practising their singing

of the Orthodox liturgy, for they could not afford to pay the chor-

isters any more. It was hard listening to the sound, outside on the

street, of the festivities for
Maslenitsa –
Butter Week – one of the most joyful festivals in the Russian Orthodox calendar. ‘Everyone

is merry. The sledges pass to and fro under our windows; sound of

bells, mouth-organs, and singing’, wrote Gilliard. Alexey proudly

noted in his diary on the 16th that he had eaten sixteen
bliny
at lunch before the onset of Lent, when everyone fasted for the first

week. They were all looking forward to the church services to come.

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‘We hope to do our devotions next week if we are allowed to do

so’, Alexandra told Lili Dehn:

I am already looking forward to those beautiful services – such

a longing to pray in church . . . Nature is beautiful, everything

is shining and brilliantly lighted up . . . We cannot complain,

we have got everything, we live well, thanks to the touching

kindness of the people, who in secret send us bread, fish, pies,

etc. . . . We too have to understand through it all that God is

greater than everything and that He wants to draw us, through

our sufferings, closer to Him . . . But my country – my God –

how I love it, with all the power of my being, and her sufferings

give me actual physical pain.80

On 20, 22 and 23 March the household were allowed to attend

church for the first time in two months, at which they were able to

hear the choir sing ‘our favourite, familiar hymns’.81 It was ‘such a joy and a consolation’, wrote Alexandra. ‘Praying at home is not the

same thing at all.’82 But Lent was also, inevitably, a time of sad

reflection. Nicholas’s mind went back to his abdication the previous

year; his last farewell to his mother at Mogilev; the day he arrived

back at Tsarksoe Selo. ‘One remembers this past difficult year unwillingly! But what yet awaits us all? It’s all in God’s hands. All our

hopes are in him alone.’83Having powered his way through most of

Leskov, Tolstoy and Lermontov he was now rereading the Bible

from start to finish. Day after day he blanked out his thoughts

chopping wood and loading it into the woodshed, the children

helping him and revelling in being out in the glorious spring

sunshine. But in truth life within the Governor’s House had become

deadening beyond belief. The children found captivity ‘irksome’,

noted Gilliard. ‘They walk round the courtyard, fenced in by its

high paling through which they can see nothing.’84 Lack of exercise

was worrying Anastasia: ‘I haven’t quite turned into an elephant yet,’

she told her aunt Xenia, ‘but may do so in the near future. I really

don’t know why it’s suddenly happened; maybe it’s from too little

exercise, I don’t know.’85

The children were still bitterly disappointed by the ‘stupid’ action

of the guards in wrecking the snow mountain, but tried their best

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to find consolation in the most prosaic of outdoor tasks. ‘We have

found new things to do: we saw, chop and split wood – it’s useful

and very jolly work . . . we’re helping a lot . . . clearing the paths and the entrance.’ Anastasia was proud of their physical labours: ‘we have turned into real yardmen’; events of the last year had taught

her and her sisters to take pleasure in the smallest of practical

achievements.

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WHEN I WAS WITH THEM

N

After the arrival of the new guards, and with it a distinct hardening in attitude towards the imperial family, everyone in the entourage

had become increasingly fearful for their safety. Rowdy and undis-

ciplined elements were making their presence felt in town too. Russia was descending into civil war and the breakdown in law and order

had finally reached Tobolsk. ‘How much longer will our unfortunate

motherland be tormented and torn apart by internal and external

enemies?’ Nicholas wondered in his diary. His despondency increased

with news that Lenin’s government had signed the Brest–Litovsk

Treaty with Germany; his abdication, for the sake of Russia, had,

he felt, been in vain. ‘It sometimes seems as though there’s no

strength left to endure, that you don’t even know what to hope for,

what to wish for’, he confided in his diary.1

By mid-March ‘all kinds of rumours and fears’ were stirred up

at the Governor’s House by the arrival in Tobolsk from Omsk of a

detachment of Bolshevik Red Guards, who promptly began imposing

their demands on the local government. They were closely followed

by even more militant groups from Tyumen and Ekaterinburg, who

roamed the town, terrorizing the inhabitants with threats of hostage-

taking (a favourite occupation of Bolshevik hardliners) and agitating to take control of the Romanovs and remove them from Tobolsk.2

In response, Kobylinsky doubled the guard at the Governor’s House

and increased the patrols round it. But nothing could dispel the

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palpable sense of danger, which fed into an already fatalistic attitude among many in the entourage. ‘I have come here knowing quite

well that I shall not escape with my life’, Tatishchev told Gleb

Botkin. ‘All I ask is to be permitted to die with my Emperor.’3

Nastenka Hendrikova was equally gloomy and had said openly to

Iza Buxhoeveden that ‘she had a premonition that all our days were

numbered’.4

For a while, earlier in the year and before the changeover in the

guard, escape had seemed a very real possibility to Pierre Gilliard

– given the obvious sympathies of Kobylinsky and the more relaxed

attitude then of most of his men. Gilliard felt that an escape could

have been effected, with the help of a group of dedicated monarchist

officers. But Nicholas and Alexandra had both been adamant that

they would not contemplate any ‘rescue’ that involved the family

being separated ‘or leaving Russian territory’.5 To do so, as Alexandra explained, would be for them to break their ‘last link with the past, which would then be dead for ever’. ‘The atmosphere around us is

fairly electrified. We feel that a storm is approaching,’ she told Anna Vyrubova at the end of March, ‘but we know that God is merciful,

and will take care of us.’ She did, however, admit that ‘things are

growing very anguishing’.6

At the end of March the greater part of everyone’s anguish was

once more focused on Alexey, who had been confined to bed with

a bad cough. The strain of his violent coughing had provoked a

haemorrhage in his groin, which soon brought excruciating pain of

the kind he had not experienced since 1912. Over at the Kornilov

House, Iza Buxhoeveden encountered a deeply despondent Dr

Derevenko just back from visiting the boy. ‘He looked very gloomy

and said that [Alexey’s] kidneys were affected by the haemorrhage,

and in that God-forsaken town none of the remedies he needed

could be got. “I fear he will not pull through,” he said, shaking his head, his eyes full of anxiety.’7 The terrible shadow of Spala haunted the Governor’s House for many days, as Alexey’s temperature rose

and bouts of agonizing pain led him to confess to his mother at one

point: ‘I would like to die, Mama; I’m not afraid of death.’ Death

itself had no hold over him; his fears were elsewhere. ‘I’m so afraid of what they may do to us here.’

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Alexandra hovered at her son’s bed, as she had always done, trying

to soothe him, watching him become ‘thin and yellow’ and ‘with

enormous eyes’ – just as at Spala.8 Their footman Alexey Volkov

felt that this attack was, if anything, worse than the earlier incident, for this time both Alexey’s legs were affected. ‘He suffered terribly, wept and cried out, calling for his mother all the time.’ Alexandra’s anguish at his suffering and her own impotence was terrible. ‘She

grieved . . . like she had never grieved before . . . she just could not cope and she wept as she had never wept before.’9 Hour after hour

she sat ‘holding his aching legs’ because Alexey could lie only on

his back, while Tatiana and Gilliard took it in turns to massage them with the Fohn apparatus they often used to keep his blood circulating.10 But Alexey’s nights were extremely restless, interrupted by bouts of severe pain. It was not until 19 April that Dr Derevenko

noted hopeful signs that the ‘resorption’ (of the blood from the

swelling into his body) was ‘going well’, although Alexey was still

very frail and in a great deal of discomfort.11

*

During Alexey’s latest crisis an order had come on 12 April that,

for security reasons, all those at the Kornilov House – except for

the two doctors, Botkin and Derevenko and their families – must

move into the Governor’s House. The house was already over-

crowded, but by partitioning off some of the rooms with screens

and doubling up, everyone managed, without too much grumbling,

to squeeze into the ground floor, in order to ‘avoid intruding upon

the privacy of the Imperial Family’ upstairs.12 The exception was

Sydney Gibbes, who refused point-blank to share with Gilliard, with

whom he did not get on. Together with his toothless old maid Anfisa,

Gibbes was allowed to lodge in a hastily converted stone outbuilding

near the kitchen – in smelling distance of the pig-swill.13 From now

on, only the doctors were free to move back and forth; the rest of

the entourage were no longer allowed into town and were, effectively, under house arrest.

Two weeks later news came that a high-ranking political commissar

from Moscow, Vasily Yakovlev, had arrived in Tobolsk to take charge

of the family. ‘Everyone is restless and distraught’, wrote Gilliard.

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‘The commissar’s arrival is felt to be an evil portent, vague but

real.’14 Anticipating an inspection and search of their things,

Alexandra immediately set about burning her recent letters as did

the girls; Maria and Anastasia even burned their diaries.15 Yakovlev, it soon turned out, had arrived with 150 new Red Guards and

instructions to remove the family to an unspecified location. But

when he and his deputy Avdeev arrived at the house it was clear

that ‘the yellow-complexioned, haggard boy seemed to be passing

away’.16 Alexey was far too unwell to be moved, Kobylinsky argued

in alarm; Yakovlev agreed to defer the family’s departure, only to

be countermanded by Lenin’s Central Committee, which ordered

him to remove the former tsar without delay. Nicholas refused

point-blank to travel alone to an undisclosed destination. When

Yakovlev conceded that he could bring a travelling companion –