Robert Alexander - The Kitchen Boy

“Oi,” softly muttered the Heir in joy.

Just as quickly as they had come, so the men left, their heads hung, their eyes cast to the floor, their lips sealed. At first none of us moved. I think we were expecting the fat, Red pig, Komendant Avdeyev, to come marching in. Instead, the workmen departed, closing the outer doors, and then… then… we poured toward the open window.

“Papa!” called Olga Nikolaevna, leaping from her bed.

“Oi, kakaya prelyest!” Oh, what a joy, shouted Tatyana Nikolaevna.

“Hourahh!” shouted the Heir as I wheeled him to the window that overlooked his former empire.

“Thank the Lord!” proclaimed the Tsar, sucking the air as deeply as he could.

Huge billowing gusts of air swarmed upon us, and we all gathered around, held our arms out, felt the breeze swirl around and lift our hearts like kites into the boundless sky.

“Isn’t the fragrance tasty?” said Nikolai Aleksandrovich.

“I can smell every garden in town!” proclaimed Anastasiya Nikolaevna, squinching up her shoulders and her nose and drinking it all in. “This is heaven!”

We heard her steps, heard her voice scared and worried as she called out, “What is it, Nicky? What’s happened? What-”

“Look, Mama!” exclaimed the Heir. “They opened a window!”

She froze at the threshold, clasped both hands over her mouth. The Tsar, laughing, turned to his consort and held out his arms. The next moment they were embracing. I rolled Aleksei Nikolaevich right up to the edge of the sill, and he grabbed on to it, clutching to all that might yet be. That was all. It only took that little bit, a single open window, to feed the royal family with delightful hope.

“Oh, Nicky, dusha moya !” My soul, said the Empress, clasping her husband.

“You see, my love. As you’ve always said, after the rain-”

“Sun.”

“After the darkness-”

“Light.”

“And after the illness-”

“Health.”

“Exactly,” said the Tsar. “We mustn’t give up faith.”

“No, my love. Never.”

But the luck of Nikolai and his brood was like an ocean liner, very difficult to turn around. At that particular moment Anastasiya Nikolaevna took it upon herself not simply to poke her head out the window, not simply to stretch outside as far as she could, but to actually climb up on the windowsill. A character, she was. Full of energy and mischief. One of her royal cousins had long ago taught her to climb trees, a habit that she could never be broken of, no matter her rank or gender.

“Careful, Nasten’ka!” chided number three sister, Maria Nikolaevna.

“Oi, Mashka, stop your worrying! I just want the air all around me. I want it to lift me up, to carry me away, far away!”

Her father, the Tsar, turned from his wife, saw his daughter perched on the ledge two floors above ground, and shouted, “ Bozhe moi !” My God! “Anastasiya Nikolaevna, you get down right this moment!”

“But, Papa-”

“Now!

“Oh, all right. I-”

But just as she turned her back to the endless world beyond, just as she readied herself to jump back into the hole of our existence, a blast rang out. More specifically, a shot. The next instant the wall of the house, not but a few centimeters from Anastasiya’s head, was struck by a bullet, and bits of stucco and brick exploded into the air. As much by fear as anything else, the poor child was thrown into the room, where she landed upon two of her sisters. They all screamed and came crashing down onto the floor, collapsing in a terrible heap of arms and legs. Before I knew it, before I could even think what to do, the Tsar grabbed the wheeling chaise from me, jerking his son from the environs of the window and pulling him back against the far wall.

Terrified, Aleksandra Fyodorovna cried out and threw herself forward, grabbing for her youngest daughter, screaming, “Anya!”

All of a sudden a huge wail rose above everything else, a terrified cry as the girl replied, “Mama!”

I stumbled back, plastering myself against the wall. Before my eyes Aleksandra made a frantic examination of her youngest daughter – limbs, head, torso – but, no, Anastasiya was not wounded, she was unscathed, merely terrified. As the girl broke into a flow of tears, Aleksandra clutched her daughter to her chest, cradling her and sobbing as well. A moment later the three other grand duchesses fell upon them, and this heap of womanhood shook like a volcano until finally, for the first time, they erupted. All this time, all these months, not one of them had broken down, not one of them had let go, and now… now they bellowed forth.

“My babies!” cried Alix, poring over her three other daughters – Olya’s hand, Tanechka’s head, Mashka’s cheek. “My precious babies!”

The Tsar turned the wheeling chaise around, pushed his son to this mass of family, and they all melded into a heap, mother and daughters on the floor, son slightly higher on his chaise, and father standing firmly above them. They all clutched and grabbed for one another, Alix hanging onto her Nicky’s leg. For the first time, the only time, I saw amazing pain boil in the Tsar’s body. He closed his eyes, bit his bottom lip. Strong, he had to be strong for family, for Russia, for God. But he couldn’t. No more. He had reached his limit, and for fear of totally falling apart, he dared not move; he simply let his terrified family drape from him like a defeated flag. With every bit of courage he had left, he pinched his lips lest he cry out, clenched his eyes shut lest he spill his fear, and his face passed from white to crimson. And yet there was only so much he could control. A tear emerged in his right eye. Two tears. They were huge and round, and slowly, quite slowly, they began to travel down his cheek and into his beard.

Everyone came flooding into the room, Demidova, Trupp, Kharitonov, the guards, and, of course, finally the komendant himself.

“What have you idiots done!” Avdeyev yelled at the family. “You, Citizen Romanov, were you trying to escape? We open a window, and what do you do a minute later, try to run away? Is that it, hey, Nikolashka, you coward, trying to get away from us?”

I thought the Tsar was going to rip off the man’s head. I saw his body quiver, his fists curl into knots of rock. But Nikolai Aleksandrovich didn’t move. No, ever-fatalistic, he silently bore the insult as he had always carried everything, crown and all.

“I… I…” he said, barely able to speak, let alone control himself, “would never… never leave my family.”

“Well, that’s not what the guard down below said. He said he looked up and saw one of you ready to jump out!”

“That fool nearly killed my daughter!”

“They have strict orders to shoot upon-”

The Emperor flung his arm out, pointing at the doorway as he screamed, “Leave us!”

“Shto?” What? coarsely replied Avdeyev. “Let me remind you that you blood drinkers are the prisoners here! In case you don’t yet understand, I am the komendant and I give the orders around-”

“Get out!”

“But-”

The Tsar’s eyes flared, his entire face flashed red with fury, and, fired with the spirits of his ancestors, he shouted, “ Get out now !”

Such a moment I will never forget. For the first and only time did Nikolai Aleksandrovich seem like a true Russian tsar, an ironfisted one. He was Ivan and Peter and Catherine all in one, and Avdeyev crumbled in a second. The komendant all but started shaking, all but bowed to the ground, for in the end of ends this was his Tsar, and at the very least he would grant him this, the few square meters upon which the august family was now huddled, as their territory and theirs alone. With no further protest, Avdeyev withdrew. And so did we, the rest of their meager attendants. Kharitonov fell away. Demidova. Trupp. Even Botkin, who had come at the last moment, ill though he was. I made my way out of the room as well. I slowly walked to the passage to the dining room, the door of which had been removed, of course. And the last I looked back, Nikolai was dropping to his knees. They were all coming together. All seven of them. Holding hands, they formed a tight circle, bowed their heads in prayer. Aleksandra and Tatyana started chanting a hymn, Nikolai spoke a prayer and… and…