Barbara Cleverly - The Blood Royal

The challenge amounted to indiscipline and he fell silent, seething with indignation and awaiting the commander’s set-down.

Joe grinned and playfully poked a finger at his lieutenant. ‘Gotcha! You walked right into it, Bacchus. Well, what do the rest of you make of my story? Easy enough to get a pair of old romantics like Bacchus and Fanshawe worked up, but will the Russian ladies be deceived? What I’ve just handed you is a load of cobbled-together nonsense. A thumping great lie! Full of holes, I confess. But I find the best way of getting someone to swallow a lie is to season it well and stick it between two thick slices of truth. Worth a try?’

There followed a ruminative silence. Joe followed his audience’s reactions through from sharp anger at being deceived to disgruntlement, puzzlement and finally a cynical acceptance. He pressed on. ‘There you are then — I’ve given you the imaginary skeleton so to speak, now help me put some real flesh on it.’

‘Oh, no. Another corpse that’s going to get up and dance,’ Lily muttered.

‘Exactly that. We’re going to resurrect a princess of the blood royal. Tatiana lives! We’ve got to make them believe that. Get your box out, Bacchus, and let’s see what we can use. Unless I’ve been misinformed, there’s a very particular relic of the second daughter in there.’

Mumbling and mistrustful, Bacchus pulled the box into the centre of the table and opened it up.

Inside was a perfectly ordinary Gladstone bag, its leather stamped with the emblem of the United Kingdom. Bacchus took it out and opened it up. ‘Our man — one of our men — in Ekaterinburg owned this bag. He had it with him when he made a consular call on the villa in the aftermath of the shootings. In the chaos that reigned — there was a squad still mopping up the pools of blood, retrieving shell cases and looting — he quietly helped himself to some Romanov goods. Not the obvious valuables of which there were plenty lying about the place. He went for the more interesting stuff — letters and diaries. He found things hidden behind water cisterns and under the bath — places the guards hadn’t thought to ransack. The outside world had managed to keep in touch with the Romanovs for many a month. Better that such incriminating documents did not fall into the hands of the Bolsheviks, of course.’

He began to take objects from the bag, laying them out with care on the mahogany surface of the table. Lily noticed that he was beginning to sort them as he picked them out. Medals, rings, icons and lockets were put in one corner, small leather-bound diaries and notebooks in another, photographs and letters in the centre. Lily could not hold back a gasp of emotion as she saw a white lace-edged handkerchief embroidered by a child’s hand in red silk at the corner. The wobbly letter A — Anastasia? Lily reached for it and held it, breathing in the trace of a spicy cologne lurking in its folds. No, this A was for Alexandra — a gift from a child to its mother.

‘It’s Tatiana we’re hunting for, remember,’ Joe reminded them, seeing his small group distracted and sinking fast into fascinated absorption. ‘Anything of her in here? We have to reconstitute her from these bits and pieces. We have to breathe life into her … conjure up an image so real that her best friend will be convinced she’s alive and well and calling her to her side.’

Fanshawe found a sheet of paper. ‘Got something, sir! Here’s her writing. That’s a start. Letter to a friend. In English. Thank God they all seem to have used English, or German. It was never sent, apparently.’

‘There was a clamp-down on their correspondence once they were at the Ipatiev house,’ said Bacchus. ‘It must have been suppressed and kept. Here’s a notecase full of letters received.’ He handed it to Lily. ‘See what you can find.’

Lily was instantly absorbed by the task. After a few moments, her voice trembling slightly, she said: ‘I’ve found a letter from our girl — Anna Petrovna. And it’s addressed to Tatiana. 1917. Before all the nastiness burst over them. Oh, she’s put … there’s a hank of hair in here.’

‘Hair? Yuck!’ said Fanshawe. ‘Well, I suppose they were very young things in 1917.’

‘It’s dark hair,’ said Lily, holding it to the light. ‘Blueblack, you’d say. Your Morana, sir? I think we’ve found her.’ She skimmed the letter quickly. ‘Not much of note. Grumbles and complaints and — oh, talk of patients. A handsome officer she’s fallen for … they were all at it … leg amputations … disease … She was nursing, of course, following the imperial example of devotion to patriotic duty. The hair is mentioned at the end … “By my hair shall you know me!” Strange thing to say?’

‘From the Bible. Matthew’s gospel. “By their fruits shall ye know them …” something like that. Religious lot, the Romanovs. And their correspondence was probably even at that time being monitored by the Red factions,’ said Bacchus. ‘They found ways of getting round the surveillance. Cocking a childish snook at the enemy. They didn’t know then how serious it was all going to get.’

‘Prepare to yuck again, Fanshawe,’ Joe said with satisfaction. He’d been passing a hand around the bottom of the bag following its turn-out. ‘Here it is. Yes! This is what I’d heard mentioned.’

He brought out, wrapped in brown paper, a wild flower album. When he opened it, no collection of dusty stalks and petals fell crumbling from the stiff pages. On each was glued a specimen, but not a botanical specimen. One after another, thick hanks of hair appeared, five in all, ranging in colour from fair to dark brown. Sandilands looked at the date in the front of the book. ‘Gathered up and stuck in the day all the children had their hair cut off. They caught some disease or other — measles, I believe — which necessitated a shaven head. But — this is it. This is something we can use. Wentworth — pick out Tatiana’s hair, will you?’

Lily took the book from him and leafed through it. ‘Here’s a fine, brownish-blond that must have been the Tsarevich’s hair … and … Ah! Here it is, sir. It’s a wonderful rich red. Dark red. Titian, would you say?’

‘That’s the one.’ Joe reached for it and began to smooth a forefinger along the still-gleaming tress. ‘Celtic ancestry. This lady could trace her line back to Ivan the Terrible, let’s not forget. And a selected lock of this is about to make its way from California in a letter, written in Tatiana’s hand, and it will say at the end, what was it? — “By my hair shall you know me!” Can we arrange for an envelope from the States, Bacchus? Stamps and suchlike? Evidence of diplomatic clearance?’

‘Nothing easier,’ Bacchus told him. ‘I’ll get straight on to it. Not sure I can compose the text of the letter though, the phrasing. I mean, I’m a thirty-five-year-old bloke. This is a twenty-five-year-old woman who’s meant to be speaking. Hand me a written version of what you want said and I’ll get our forger to do it.’

The men glanced at each other in dismay. ‘Um … yes … ah …’

‘Don’t look at me!’ said Fanshawe.

‘I’ll do it,’ Lily said. ‘Just give me time to read through these letters of Tatiana’s and get the flavour and an ear for the phrasing. Can anyone tell me what sort of girl she was? I suppose I ought to know that if I’m going to pretend to be her.’

It was Bacchus who replied. ‘We hear plenty about the others but not a great deal about this one. Mother’s favourite … reserved … stand-offish and squashing. Her pekinese dog was shot dead in the bloodbath. Sorry, I’m not being very helpful. Now if you wanted Maria we could supply — people are only too pleased to talk about her and they smile when they speak. A true Russian beauty, open and friendly. It was the little one no one could stand — Anastasia. Even her mother called her a devil. Mischievous little troublemaker seems to be the general opinion. Sorry, Wentworth, this isn’t of much use, is it?’