The Tsarina's Daughter (Reading Group Gold) Read online

  How could papa help feeling worried when every day big heavy bags full of telegrams were delivered to his study, telegrams from all over the world, more than any one man could ever possibly read, let alone answer.

  “I know what they all say,” he would remark as more and more bags were brought in. “I don’t have to read them. They are full of criticisms. ‘Give up your crown,’ they say. ‘Give Russia to the people.’ But if I did step down, would the Russian people be able to govern themselves? I think not.”

  Each day more bags were delivered, and each night, Niuta told me, she saw them loaded into a cart along with the night soil and dumped into the Fontanka Canal.

  Sometimes papa could forget all his worries and be very silly, especially with Uncle Sandro. He and Sandro liked to chase each other around the room or wrestle like boys or push each other off the sofa, laughing and punching each other. But Uncle Sandro was frightened too, in those hard days after Uncle Gega died, and Aunt Xenia his wife was frightened along with him. I heard them talking to papa and mama about their yacht, and their plan to sail her to Greece and live there.

  “Leave Russia!” I heard Papa say. “Never. Only a coward would leave.” But despite his bold words he still hid on the Children’s Island, and young as I was then, I could see fear in his eyes.

  We had a new tutor just then, Monsieur Pierre Gilliard, who gave us lessons in French and history and told us wonderful stories about places he had been and things he had seen. He was a serious man, and when I was little I thought him very wise. His dark grey suits and striped ties worn with a stickpin, his knowing light brown eyes and thick brown beard gave him the air of a professor, which he had once been. He spoke French and German with us, though he only knew a little Russian. He read plays to us, taking all the parts, and he even wrote plays himself.

  On the first day he came to Tsarskoe Selo and mama brought him into the nursery to meet us, I offered to take him to see the elephant.

  His eyes brightened at this suggestion, and I took his hand and we all went together, even little Anastasia, to the zoo in the park near the Children’s Island where the sad old beast lived in his own elephant house. My younger sisters’ nurse went with us.

  No one could remember how long the elephant had been at Tsarskoe Selo, but it was said he had been brought from India as a gift to papa’s grandfather. He was very shaggy and dusty—he liked to shoot dust out of his trunk high up into the air and let it fall down his back—and the water in his small pond was always dirty and smelly.

  “Do you know where India is?” Monsieur Gilliard asked us after he had gazed at the animal for a few minutes.

  “I know!” Olga said. “It is right below China, and above Australia.”

  “Capital, Olga, capital!” He liked this English expression, and used it often, rubbing his hands together.

  “And can you tell me something about India, Tatiana?”

  “I know there are elephants there, and tigers. Papa shot a tiger in India once.”

  “No he didn’t. That was Uncle Vladimir.”

  Monsieur Gilliard ignored Olga’s interruption. “And what of the climate, Tatiana? Is it very hot there, in India, do you think?”

  I shrugged. I didn’t know.

  “Silly, of course it is very hot there. It is all desert. No one can live there in the summer.”

  Monsieur Gilliard was peering into the elephant’s enclosure. The dusty elephant was shaking his head and stamping one foot.

  “I imagine he must be very cold, here in Russia. He is used to lots of hot sun. And I imagine he is very lonely.” He lowered his voice as he spoke.

  “I like him,” Marie said loudly, almost shouting. “I want to ride him!” She ran up to the bars of the enclosure and, grasping them, began shaking them.

  “Marie!” The nurse pulled her back from the ironwork and chided her.

  Monsieur Gilliard continued to talk to us, very naturally and pleasantly, for half an hour before we went in to tea. We warmed to him, and our French improved, listening to him speak, though we all began to speak French the way the Swiss do and not the way the Parisians do.

  It was Monsieur Gilliard who explained to us, briefly and in a way Olga and I could understand, why we had to stay at Tsarskoe Selo and why everyone was so frightened. He told us about the defeat of our Russian fleet and the shameful way some of the sailors behaved, rising up and rebelling against their captains and even murdering some of them. He talked in a calm, reasonable way about these terrible events, and he made us see them as part of history rather than as sudden, shocking blows to our dear Russia.

  “Nearly anything can be understood,” he said reflectively, “provided it is seen in the light of history. We are all a part of history, we add to it every day.”

  I thought of this on the day papa was about to leave Tsarskoe Selo to ride at the head of a cavalry parade in Petersburg. He wore the green trousers and red and gold jacket of the Grozny Hussars, and was mounted on a splendid prancing roan. We all came out onto the terrace of the palace to watch him as he took his place at the head of a mass of mounted riders, even mama, who was having trouble walking as her leg was very sore.

  Just as the gates were opening to let the horsemen out, with my father leading them, a messenger arrived on a lathered horse, panting and shouting.

  The riders halted, and for a few moments we continued to stand and watch, not knowing what was happening. Then we saw the great iron gates swing shut, and papa turned his horse and rode at a gallop back toward the stables.

  Later we learned that the messenger had brought a warning, from one of the ministers. The bomb-throwers were waiting along the parade route. They had three carts loaded with bombs. They meant to kill papa.

  “A hellish plot!” Grandma Minnie said. “A wicked, hellish plot!”

  Still later, at dinner, we learned that they had thrown their bombs, but that only one man, the old doorman at the Mariinsky Hotel, was killed.

  Papa knew him, he had often been taken to the hotel as a child, and remembered him. I saw papa walking on the Children’s Island at twilight and gathering lilies of the valley, and I knew that he was thinking of the poor old man and it made me sad.

  “Children!” mama said to us the following morning, her smile bright, “I have something to show you.” She held up a small icon, painted in bold colors and with a thick gold frame. “A wise starets—a holy man—from Pokrovsky has sent papa this wonderworking icon of St. Simon Verkhoturie. It was this icon that saved his life yesterday. It will protect him from now on.”

  She carefully hung the icon on the wall, and nodded to a servant to light the candle beneath it. We all knelt and prayed for papa’s safety. Monsieur Gilliard’s words came back to me as I knelt there. We are all a part of history. We add to it every day. What, I wondered, would the next day bring, and the next?

  Six

  It was just after we returned from our summer cruise aboard our yacht, the Standart, that I first met Daria.

  For a month and more we had been cruising in calm Baltic waters, winding in and out among the small islands off the Finnish coast, the weather fair and warm, the winds soft. We went ashore and waded along the rocky shoreline, our skirts tucked up under our belts, our petticoats wet and bedraggled, trying to catch fish with our nets while papa shot at ravens and sea birds and looked out across the water through his binoculars.

  Mama, who was always at her most relaxed and at ease on our yacht, sat in her deck chair with a warm shawl around her legs and took pictures of us all, now smiling when we posed for her, now growing cross with us when we made faces or turned our backs to the lens. Anastasia ran up and down the deck too quickly to be photographed at all, and Marie stuck out her tongue at the camera and then tried to climb the ropes and the mast.

  Those were carefree days, except that mama and papa were always watching Alexei, looking for signs that he was bleeding again. His left leg stuck out all the time, he could never bend his knee because there was too much blo
od inside it. He couldn’t really walk, so he hobbled, but then he fell down a lot so one of the sailors, a big sturdy one called Derevenko, had to carry him. Mama took a lot of pictures of Derevenko on the yacht with Alexei in his arms.

  It was just after we got back to Tsarskoe Selo, as I said, that I met Daria for the first time.

  Niuta was removing my slippers to have them cleaned when a kitchen maid came into the nursery and handed her a note. She read it and put it in her pocket. I saw at once that whatever was in the note alarmed her.

  She handed my soiled slippers to a waiting valet and hurriedly put new ones on my feet.

  “Come!” she said, taking my hand. “We’re going to the kitchens.”

  I was pleased at first, thinking she was going to offer me a treat—some freshly baked pastries, or a jam roll of the kind mama loved or perhaps a tart—but instead we went right through the furnace-hot palace bakery without stopping and on down the stone steps into a pantry lined with shelves full of jars and pots and cans.

  In one corner was a young girl crouching as if in fear, her face black with soot and her clothes grey rags covered in soot and ash. She clutched a basket. Inside the basket was a small dog, its fur as black with soot as its mistress.

  “Daria!”

  Niuta ran to the girl, helped her to her feet and put her arms around her.

  “Dariushka! What happened to you?”

  “Fire,” the girl said, her voice little more than a whisper. “Fire all around.”

  “Where?”

  “The factory. All the factories.” She choked and coughed. “So many people—all running—the police chasing us—” She broke off, unable to speak further.

  “There there, I’ll take care of you now.”

  Niuta turned to me. “Tania, dear, would you please be so good as to go back to the bakery and get some wet cloths and a few rolls and a glass of tea for my little sister?”

  “Your sister?”

  “This is my sister, Daria. Daria, this is the Grand Duchess Tatiana.”

  “How do you do,” I said politely. The girl glanced at me suspiciously, and gave me the barest nod.

  Of course I thought the situation very odd, because I was never asked to do such menial tasks and it was unheard-of for servants to bring their relatives into the palace. Still, Niuta was someone I loved and trusted, for she was my mother’s principal dresser and was often in the nursery and I had known her all my life, and her sister was obviously in need of help. I went into the bakery and asked if I might have some rolls and some tea. While the food was being brought I found some cloths covering fresh loaves of bread and dipped them in a pan of water. Then I took everything back down the stone steps into the pantry.

  “Thank you, Tania. I think you ought to go back to the nursery now.”

  “I want to stay. I want to help.”

  “You? The tsar’s daughter? You want to help me?” Daria’s voice was hoarse and accusatory as she tried to talk. Niuta handed her the glass of tea I had brought and she took a long swallow.

  “Yes. Why shouldn’t I?”

  Daria spat.

  “Do you know who set the fire that nearly killed me? Your father’s police, that’s who.”

  “Why would they do that?” I wanted to know.

  Daria had begun wolfing down the rolls I had brought, and feeding some to the dog, who gobbled up the floury morsels she held out to him as if he hadn’t eaten in days.

  “Because we’re on strike,” she said with her mouth nearly full.

  “Daria is employed at the Phoenix metalworking plant,” Niuta explained. “All the workers there are on strike.”

  “All the factory workers in Petersburg are on strike,” Daria said with some vehemence after she swallowed what was left of her roll. “We want fair wages. We don’t want to work sixteen hours a day, until we drop from weariness or walk into the machinery and die.”

  She drank her tea and rubbed her swollen eyelids, then went on.

  “It started in the Shchukin Arcade. A big fire. The police did it. My friend saw them. They put a torch to some old dry wood, and threw on some rags to make it burn faster.”

  Fear came into the girl’s eyes as she went on, reliving the terror of what she had seen and experienced.

  “It was like hell, the flames of hell. The heat! The smell of all the burning wood! The screaming! So much screaming!

  “ ‘The plant’s going up,’ I heard a man say. It was the rubber plant not far from us. We smelled the tires burning. That’s when they unlocked the doors and let us all out.”

  “You mean you were locked in?”

  Daria looked at me with contempt.

  “We are always locked in. Aren’t cattle always locked in, to keep them from running away?

  “Everybody began running,” she resumed after a moment. “I was thrown against the wall. I was lucky. Some people got trampled.”

  “Did no one try to help you? Not the police or the soldiers? They must have tried to help the women at least—” I began, but Daria’s glare silenced me.

  “She is too young to understand,” Niuta said to her sister. “We mustn’t speak of this any more now.”

  “No, no. I want to understand. I want to know,” I insisted.

  “What if she tells somebody?” Daria asked Niuta, suddenly fearful. “You’ll be put in prison.”

  “I don’t think so. The empress has always been kind to me.”

  “Except when she yells at you,” I put in, for mama did get very excited and angry at times and shouted at the servants. “Remember when you forgot to lock the lace cabinet that time.”

  “Great ladies forget themselves sometimes,” Niuta said archly. “It is overlooked.”

  Daria’s little dog gave a sharp bark and Niuta looked around the pantry warily.

  “Keep him quiet! We don’t want anyone coming in and finding you here.” As she spoke Niuta handed her sister one of the wet cloths I had brought. “Here, wash your face and hands. I’ll try to get some of this soot off your clothes. Then I’ll take you upstairs.”

  In a few moments, as I watched, Daria was transformed from a grimy factory worker into a round-faced peasant girl, her colorful red kerchief rinsed out and replaced over her fair hair, her complexion sallow but still with a hint of freshness from the countryside. The change in her appearance was striking, but there was no change, I noticed, in her eyes. They were filled with hostility, fear and deep distrust.

  Niuta began brushing the soot and ash from Daria’s full skirts and then cried out.

  “By all the saints! You’re pregnant!”

  Daria held her head up proudly. “What if I am? I can have a child if I choose!”

  Niuta crossed herself. “But Daria, you’re so very young, and you have no husband!”

  “I was going to have one, until the Cossacks cut him to bits!” For the first time I saw her eyes fill with tears, though her hoarse voice remained raised, her tone defiant.

  “It was the day we went on strike,” she went on. “We marched, thousands of us, down Schlüsselburg Road past the factories and mills. We were singing. We joined hands. We felt so strong that morning! Then we heard them coming. Hundreds of them, Cossacks on big horses, riding toward us with their swords up, and yelling as they came. My Sasha stood up against them, but they cut his head open. He fell down and never got up.”

  I listened, horrified but at the same time intrigued. I was ashamed of myself for being so interested in such dreadful events.

  “We were going to go home to Pokrovsky and get married. Instead I am a widow before I even became a wife! And I’m going to have Sasha’s baby!”

  Niuta helped her trembling sister back up the steps and I brought along the little dog in his basket. Daria was sheltered, temporarily, in Niuta’s tiny attic room—all mama’s personal servants slept in the attic—and was given work in the ironing room, the vast workroom where dozens of servants ironed mama’s gowns and removed and ironed their yards of trimmings.
/>   Later, after Niuta and I had returned to the nursery, she sat me down and talked to me seriously.

  “Tania, I trust you not to say anything to anyone, not even your mother and father, about what you have seen and heard today.”

  I readily gave my word, sensing that I had been entrusted with a glimpse into a world I had never known existed, and feeling privileged that Niuta trusted me.

  “I love my baby sister, but she can be very difficult. We came here from Pokrovsky together and were helped by a priest to get work. I have been very content. Your mother is a good mistress even if she does get angry sometimes. But Daria chose to work in the factory and has been angry and unhappy ever since. I wish she had been able to marry and go back home.”

  “I have been saving my pocket money,” I said. “If I gave it to her, could she go back home?”

  Niuta smiled. “You are a kind girl, Tania. But I’m afraid it would cost much more than you have to send her back. And I’m not certain she would go. But at least, for the time being, she will be all right. Once her baby is born, however, everything will change. I don’t know what she’ll do then.”

  That night after Olga and I had taken our baths in our silver tub, the hot bath water scented with oil of almonds, I longed to tell Olga about Daria, and especially about what she had said about the police starting a fire and attacking and killing the striking workers. Was it possible? Were my father’s proud, handsome Cossack regiments murdering people? Or were they merely keeping order? Surely order had to be preserved.

  Troublesome thoughts preyed on my mind when I tried to sleep, and I tossed and turned in my uncomfortable camp bed.

  “In the name of all the saints, Tania, stop your thrashing!” Olga snapped. I heard her pounding her pillow. “I’m going to ask papa if I can have my own room!”

  Seven

  Mama, can I have my own room?”