The Romanov Sisters (Four Sisters) (57 page)

repast, like a meal in a house of mourning’, during which Nicholas

and Alexandra were obliged to sit apart, the tsaritsa hardly speaking.

She ate nothing and drank only a cup of coffee, saying she was

‘always on a diet’.49

Beautiful spring weather greeted Easter Sunday, ‘a day of great

joy despite the human suffering’, recalled Elizaveta Naryshkina.

Nicholas presented her with a porcelain egg with his insignia. ‘I

shall treasure it as a good memory’, she wrote in her diary. ‘How

few loyal people they have left . . . One cannot be certain of the

future: everything depends on whether the Provisional Government

can hold on or whether the anarchists will win – the danger is

unavoidable. How I wish that they could leave as soon as possible,

seeing that they are now all well.’50 It being a Sunday and a public

holiday, crowds gathered outside the railings to gawp at the tsar

when he came out to work in the garden, surrounded by guards

with fixed bayonets. ‘We look like convicts with their warders’,

Pierre Gilliard remarked ruefully.51 People were now taking day

trips out from the capital to stand and stare and there were as many

again on Easter Monday, gathered to watch Nicholas shovelling the

snow away from the canal. They stood there in silence, ‘like watching a wild animal in a cage’, recalled Valentina Chebotareva. ‘Why do

they have to do this?’52 The family had at least been consoled by

another wonderful service that day but afterwards, when Elizaveta

Naryshkina went to see the grand duchesses in their sickroom, she

had been alarmed to see how much thinner Maria was, though ‘very

much prettier; the expression on her face sad and gentle. You can

see that she has suffered a lot and that what she has been through

has left a deep mark on her.’53

At the annexe hospital, Valentina Chebotareva was continually

saddened and frustrated by the lack of contact, particularly with her beloved Tatianochka. ‘We know little about the prisoners, although

letters regularly arrive’, but these were extremely circumspect. She

was worried about writing too often, which might be seen as a

provocation by those who did not understand her close friendship

with the grand duchesses. Any letters sent in signed with pet names

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and not in full immediately fell under suspicion as being some kind

of coded message – there had already been problems with the

authorities taking exception to letters sent by ‘Lili’ and ‘Titi’ or

sometimes even ‘Tili’ – a combination of the two.54 Knowing that

they could now never return to the annexe, Tatiana had asked Bibi

and Valentina to send back the things they had left there. Valentina

worried that this too might be looked upon suspiciously, but never-

theless she packed up their nurses’ smocks, photo albums and other

mementoes, together with a last photograph of them taken with

their wounded in the dining room.55 Tatiana in return sent gifts of

shirts, pillows and books for the patients from herself and Olga.

‘Tell darling Bibi that we love her and kiss her fondly’, she wrote,

adding plaintively, ‘What are Mitya and Volodya doing?’56 The girls

sent Easter greetings on the Sunday but Valentina was worried to

read how ill Olga was and that ‘Alexey Nikolaevich is in bed having

hurt his arm – another haemorrhage’. She had heard that when

Kerensky had recently visited, he had asked Alexey, ‘Do you have

everything you need?’ to which the child had responded:

‘Yes, only I’m bored and I love the soldiers so much.’

‘But there are so many all around and in the garden.’

‘No, not that kind, they aren’t going to the front – it’s those that

I love.’57

There were indeed plenty of soldiers all around, so much so that

Tsarskoe Selo was now being called
Soldatskoe Selo
[Soldiers’ Village]

for, as a British businessman in Petrograd remarked, ‘The Tsarskoe

Selo municipal authorities are as ultra-Red as Versailles in 1789.’58

It was now April and the days were beginning to drag – ‘one and

the same, in a state of spiritual anguish’, as Elizaveta Naryshkina

noted.59 While Tatiana was often out in the garden with Nicholas

helping to break the ice around the bridges, Alexandra remained

preoccupied with Olga and Maria, who were still confined to their

rooms. ‘Olga is still very weak poor thing,’ wrote a despondent

Elizaveta Naryshkina on 9 April, ‘her heart has been strained by

unremitting illness over the last two months . . . She is very sweet; and Maria is enchanting even though still in bed with the last vestiges of pleurisy.’60 Tatiana meanwhile was pining for the annexe: ‘It’s sad that now we are better we can’t come and work in the hospital again.

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It’s so strange to be at home in the morning and not to be doing

the dressings.’ Who was doing them, she asked Valentina.61 ‘What

will happen to our old hospital now?’ ‘Forgive me for so many

questions dear Valentina Ivanovna, but it’s so interesting to know

what is happening with you. We constantly remember how good it

was to work at the hospital and how we all got along together.’62

Korovichenko had been doing his best to defend the right of the

girls to send and receive so many letters. ‘They had been hard

workers, worked like real sisters of mercy’, he told Valentina. ‘Why

should they be deprived in Easter Week of the joy of exchanging

greetings with their former wounded and their work colleagues?’

He vetted all their letters and their content was ‘absolutely innocent’.

‘Often Sister Khitrovo and other nurses [send letters] which I have

handed on.’ He had, however, ‘a whole box full of letters to the

Romanov family’ that he had chosen not to allow through.63 Among

the letters being allowed out by Korovichenko were those from

Anastasia to Katya Zborovskaya. ‘Truly He is Risen!’ she exclaimed

at the opening of an Eastertide letter, in which she enclosed one of

the first snowdrops of spring from the garden and told her that she

and Tatiana were now going out for walks and helping to break the

ice. But, worryingly, Anastasia also confided that ‘After Olga had a

sore throat, something happened to her heart, and she has rheuma-

tism now’ – suggesting that Olga’s ‘inflammation of the heart’ was

in fact the far more serious post-measles complication of rheumatic

fever.64

By mid-April, with the younger children back at their desks, a

new modified timetable of lessons was set up for them and shared

among the remaining members of the entourage. Nicholas began

teaching Alexey geography and history; Alexandra took on religious

doctrine and catechism, as well as giving Tatiana tuition in German;

Olga, when recovered, helped teach her siblings English and history.

Iza Buxhoeveden gave Alexey and his younger sisters piano lessons,

and also taught them all English. Trina Schneider tutored them in

maths and Russian grammar; Nastenka Hendrikova taught Anastasia

history and gave her art lessons with Tatiana; Dr Botkin took on

Russian literature with Alexey and Dr Derevenko volunteered to

give him science lessons. Pierre Gilliard continued his French lessons
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with all five children. Everyone pulled together to try and create as normal an environment as possible in such abnormal circumstances.65

The family appeared to be quietly adjusting to its new, highly

circumscribed life; one of the young subaltern guards told Elizaveta

Naryshkina how impressed he was: ‘having come down from his

pedestal’ even the emperor seemed contented, so long as his routine

was not disturbed and he could have ‘his walks and tea at five

o’clock’.66

Increasingly absorbed in thoughts of God Alexandra seemed to

draw especial comfort from her Bible lessons with the children. The

girls made a point, as they always did, of remembering her name

day on 23 April when all the
arestovanniye
–
‘those under arrest’ as Nicholas called them – gave her little home-made gifts.67 Olga

composed a poem specially:

You are filled with anguish

For the suffering of others.

And no one’s grief

Has ever passed you by.

You are relentless

Only toward yourself,

Forever cold and pitiless.

But if only you could look upon

Your own sadness from a distance,

Just once with a loving soul –

Oh, how you would pity yourself.

How sadly you would weep.68

On 30 April, Anastasia was delighted to tell Katya, in a letter

enclosing several postcards for Viktor and the other officers, that

now that the ground had at last begun to thaw ‘we all together

started to dig our own kitchen garden . . . The weather is wonderful

today, and it is very warm, so we have worked for a long time.’ The

sisters had rearranged their rooms upstairs as they adapted to their

changed circumstances: ‘We are all now sitting together and writing

in the same Red Room, where we still live, as we do not want to

move to our bedroom.’ They had attached a swing to the gymnastic

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rings in the doorway, where ‘we swing so nicely that the screws

probably won’t last long’.69

May came but the cold weather still lingered. There was snow

and a cold wind the day Nicholas turned forty-nine; Alexey was

suffering from pains in his arms yet again and was back in bed, and

the ever loyal Elizaveta Naryshkina had bronchitis, brought on by

the perishing cold in the unheated rooms. Thoughtful as always,

Nicholas came and sat with her and Alexandra sent a posy of anem-

ones picked from the garden, but on the 12th Elizaveta had to be

sent away to the Catherine Palace Hospital to be nursed. As she

said goodbye to Nicholas ‘both of us had a premonition that we

would never be together again. We embraced repeatedly, and he

kissed my hands incessantly.’70

Work in the garden remained the only outlet for pent-up ener-

gies and May was spent by everyone busily weeding carrots, radishes,

onions and lettuce, watering them and watching with pride as the

500 cabbages they had planted began to swell in their neatly ordered

rows. When Nicholas, still wearing his khaki soldier’s tunic, had

exhausted all possible work in the vegetable garden he began a

vigorous and systematic felling of dead trees, sawing them up ready

for winter. It was now warm enough to take Alexey out in the rowing

boat on the pond near the Children’s Island, or ride bicycles with

his daughters. And they had the dogs – Alexey’s Joy, Tatiana’s Ortipo and Anastasia’s Jimmy, as well as two kittens produced by the cat

from Stavka that Alexey had given Olga.71

Nicholas seemed perfectly contented to work up a sweat doing

physical labour: ‘Congenial work in the vegetable garden,’ he noted

on 6 May, ‘we began to dig beds. After tea vespers, supper, and

evening reading – [I am] much more with my sweet family than in

normal years.’72 It was hard to ‘be without news of dear Mama,’ he

admitted, ‘but I am indifferent toward everything else’.73

As the Maytime lilac blossom came into full bloom, ‘the aroma

of the garden was wonderful when you sat by the window’, observed

Nicholas; the girls revelled in it too.74 Anastasia was bright and

chirpy in her letters to Katya, telling her on the 20th how much

they enjoyed their work in the garden:

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We have already planted a lot; the total number of beds is sixty

so far, but we are going to plant more. As now we do not have

to work that much, we often just lie and warm ourselves in the

sun. We have taken a lot of pictures, and we even processed the

film ourselves.

But it was hard to have to tell Katya, who had now left Tsarskoe

Selo with her family and gone south, that their hospitals were to

be closed soon ‘and everybody will go away, to my great sorrow’.

We are thinking of everybody a lot; now while I am writing this

letter, my sisters are sitting next to me in the room and are

drinking tea, and Maria is sitting on the window sill and writing

letters; they all talk a lot, and make writing letters difficult. They kiss you many times. Are you still roller-skating? Do you feel

cosy living with your mother in a new place? I’m sending you a

sprig of lilac from our garden; let it remind you of northern

spring . . . Well Katya, sweetheart, I have to finish . . . Huge

regards to everybody from us! May the Lord be with you. I kiss

you as deeply as I love you. Your A.75

For all the sisters thoughts were increasingly turning to the things

they missed so much. ‘Today, quite softly, I could hear the sound

of the Catherine Palace bells’, Olga told her friend Zinaida Tolstaya.

‘I wish so much that I could sometimes go to Znamenie.’76 Anastasia