Blood of the Czars Read online

  The Red soldiers took the czar and the czarina separately, leaving the four girls and the hemophiliac boy Alexis behind under guard. Tatiana had them sew a fortune in jewels into their clothing, but that cleverness was to prove pointless. As Lenin had secretly arranged, the train carrying the czar was turned back onto tracks taking it into Ekaterinburg. There, they were brought to “the house of special purpose” that had been prepared for them. Tatiana and the other children followed soon after.

  The family’s happiness at being reunited swiftly changed to despair.

  Armed guards with big pistols, hard-core revolutionaries from the town, sat outside their open bedroom doors while they slept at night. These coarse brutes followed Tatiana, all the girls, into the lavoratory when they used it. They drew filthy pictures on the walls depicting the monk Rasputin and the Empress engaging in perverse sexual acts. They were animals, making every moment of this imprisonment a torment. One guard, who had warmed to the children, tried to prevent some of this. He was shot.

  On July 4, on discreet orders from Lenin in Moscow, the local guards were replaced with another unit. The new men were well-disciplined, correct, even courteous. They were Cheka, Lenin’s secret police, and they had been carefully selected for their mission.

  At this point, Tatty set the manuscript aside. She took a strong drink of the vodka, letting it fill her stomach with its heat, then sat a long moment, running her hands over her face, listening to her own heavy, unhappy breathing.

  She did not want to read on, though she knew she must, as her grandmother had intended. It was not that she was squeamish. Had she not herself killed another human being? It was that she desperately did not want to have happen what had already happened nearly seven decades before. In her fuzzy state, it almost seemed logical to her that, if she did not turn the page, the violent, cruel, awful act would not ever have occurred.

  She turned back to the old photograph, looked deep into those wide, gray, beautiful eyes set in the face that was so much hers. This tragic young woman had done nothing, had starved no peasant, imprisoned no dissident, ordered no father from his suffering family to the front. She had no involvement in politics, no involvement with any vile, corrupt Rasputin. She was just a young woman, still waiting for the fullness of life’s joys and wonders. She was not quite twenty-one. It was quite possible she had not yet even been in love.

  Again vodka, and again. Then Mathilde’s words, the French perfectly clear.

  On the night of July 16, around midnight, the Emperor and his family were awakened and told to dress at once, because the White Army was nearing Ekaterinburg and they had to be moved for their safety. The family believed this deceit, and did as they were told. When ready, they were escorted downstairs and taken to a very small basement and told to wait. At the Emperor’s request, three chairs were brought, allowing him, the Empress, and the sleepy Alexis to rest. Behind them stood the four girls, the family doctor, and three servants. When the guards returned, they were carrying those huge military revolvers.

  The leader said, “Your relations have tried to save you. They have failed and we must now shoot you.”

  It is reported that the Czar tried to rise to stand in front of Alexandra and Alexis and protect them. He was shot through the head. The Empress was shot through the breast and died at once. Tatiana was hit by a fusillade of bullets, striking her in the chest and stomach and head. She fell with two of her sisters. The doctor and two of the servants were also slain in the shooting. The maid, Demidova, had not been hit. As they were out of ammunition, the killers took some rifles with bayonets from an adjoining chamber and chased her about the room, clubbing and stabbing her until she ceased her wild screaming and died. The fiends clubbed the family spaniel to death. When Alexis, who had only been wounded, regained consciousness, they kicked him in the head and one who still had bullets fired twice into the boy’s ear. The youngest daughter, Anastasia, proved to have only fainted. They dealt with her with bayonets and rifle butts. Then all were dead and the room was silent and the floor was a river of blood, czarist blood.

  All this has been recorded by Bolshevik historians and is in archives in the Kremlin.

  The fiends tried to hide their awful crime. The next day, they began chopping up all the bodies with axes and burning the pieces in gasoline. The bones that would not burn were soaked in acid. What was left was thrown into a deep abandoned mine shaft. That was the grave of this beautiful, holy family.

  The White Army retook Ekaterinburg eight days later, and saw the evidence of the shooting in “the house of special purpose.” Admiral Kolchak, the White leader in Siberia, ordered a thorough investigation, which uncovered much of what is related here.

  The investigators reclaimed hundreds of articles of evidence—jewelry, religious crosses, belt buckles, small icons, fragments of clothing, eyeglasses, and a military badge—all known to belong to the Imperial Family. They found charred bones in the mine shaft, and the still unburned body of the family dog. A severed finger was also found. On it, too tight to remove, was an emerald ring. It was Tatiana’s ring.

  The jackal Sverdlov, the Lenin lieutenant who masterminded the czar’s removal to Ekaterinburg and arranged this bestial crime, was mysteriously murdered six months later. Ekaterinburg was renamed Sverdlovsk in his horrible honor. The criminal Lenin died of a stroke six years afterward, but that by no means sufficed. The murders of my family have not been avenged.

  Tatty drank more vodka, but it was insufficient to the task. Letting the manuscript fall to the floor, she turned and pressed her face into her pillow, and cried. At length, she was rescued by sleep, but it took a very long time.

  2

  Tatty awoke at the first light of morning, a cool breeze gently stirring the curtains. It seemed much too early for the air to be that restless. Her mind toyed with the word ghosts.

  She rolled onto her back, closing her eyes tightly and rubbing them, as though she could rub away the images of the night before, the bloodied bodies in long dresses, the face of the young woman with her grandmother in the old photograph. The Pernod and vodka had left her more sickened and depressed than she had been in months, or years. She lay still, perfectly and desperately still.

  But there was no going back to sleep. She had spent too many hours on this bed. Overriding the nausea and depression was the urge for freedom and escape.

  Tatty sat up, swinging her tan legs over the side of the bed and dizzily gripping its edge. She wanted a brisk cold shower, but the noise would awaken her guests, and she was in no mood for company this morning. Good God, what if she went down to the kitchen and found Cyril? She quickly brushed her teeth, then pulled on a pair of khaki shorts and a blue blouse, slipping her feet into a comfortably worn pair of Topsiders. She would bathe in the ocean, after her run. Gingerly picking up the half empty bottle of vodka, Tatty made her way quietly down the stairs to the kitchen.

  It was extremely neat and clean. Gwen must have stayed up after all the partying to tidy things—even the ashtrays had been washed. Tatty made a Bloody Mary of sorts with a small amount of vodka and some V-8 juice, almost spilling it when she heard someone come into the room behind her.

  “Did you have a good sleep?” Gwen asked, moving to wipe clean the countertop where Tatty had spilled juice. Gwen could only have had a few hours of sleep herself. She was barefoot, and wearing another shapeless housedress, doubtless with nothing underneath.

  “That wasn’t my problem,” Tatty said. “I’ve had too much bloody sleep, and much too much to drink.”

  “I imagine everyone will have hangovers. Cyril found more cheap wine downstairs. Do you suppose it belonged to the previous owners?”

  Tatty looked to an empty gallon jug visible at the top of the full trash basket.

  “That woman who called yesterday,” she said, “the secretary, who said to expect a Ron?”

  “Yes,” said Gwen, moving now to put the juice away.

  “I believe she meant Ram.”

  “
Ram?”

  “Ram. Ramsey Saylor.”

  Gwen paused and blushed, as well she might. Ramsey had been the first man Gwen had slept with. He had seduced her on Cape Cod’s Nauset Beach that long-ago summer, when she was nineteen. This carried little stigma with Tatty. Ramsey had performed the same service for her a few nights later.

  “Such a long time ago,” Gwen said.

  “I’ve seen him more recently. Quite recently. Last year, in fact.”

  “Oh? Where?”

  “In the city. And in France.”

  “Did you invite him out here?”

  “No. I don’t know why he might be coming. I don’t think he is, really. There’s nothing left of the weekend. That call was probably some mistake.”

  “I hope so. All we need out here is Ramsey Saylor.”

  Tatty took two compulsive gulps of her drink, coughed, took a deep breath, then drank again.

  “Gwen. Do I look Russian?”

  Gwen smiled, as though sharing a happy secret. “Sometimes. But sometimes you look very English. And sometimes just yourself. You have a very expressive face, Tatty. After all, you’re an actress.”

  “There are so many Russians on my mother’s side of the family. I just wonder if it’s beginning to show through more as I get older.”

  “You look beautiful, Tatty.”

  Gwen’s expression was one of adoration. Tatty hurriedly finished her drink.

  “I’m going for a run,” she said. “Would you hide this vodka some place where Cyril and Amanda won’t find it?”

  “I’ll put it in the dishwasher. What shall I do if Ramsey Saylor does show up?”

  “Shoot him.”

  “That’s a joke.”

  “Kind of. I’ll be back in an hour or so. Don’t let our hungover guests run amok.”

  “Tatty. What did Ram Saylor do to you?”

  “Nothing. Nothing you need worry about. Relax, Gwen. I’m sure he’s not coming.”

  All of August had been cool. This September morning was almost chilly, the cloudless, crystalline sky meeting the darker blue of ocean at a sharply etched horizon. Tatty removed her shoes when she reached the beach, breaking into a fast-paced run when at last she came to the hard, surf-packed sand; but not long after she slowed down, coughing. Her damn fool drinking. The poisons would have to be driven from her body slowly.

  She trotted east toward the sun, squinting against its shattering brightness, her breast heaving as her need for oxygen turned discomfort into pain and pain into agony. She ran on anyway until she couldn’t take another step. Then she collapsed rolling onto the sand, lying limp and weak on her back, listening to the scree of nearby seagulls with her eyes closed, the cold splash of shallow waves reaching to her feet.

  The questions still clung to her mind. Who had sent her that horrifying manuscript from her grandmother’s grave? When was Sid Greene going to call her about the new play? Why was Ramsey coming? Was he in fact coming or had she made too much of a wrong number or some secretary’s mistake?

  She rolled over onto her stomach and looked idly at the sand, drawing in it with her finger, finally writing his name, as she recalled doing at Nauset Beach that first summer on Cape Cod, only that time she had spelled his last name “Sailor.” He had been her first man who was not still a boy. Their sexual experiences were not only her first, but her best. She had never again encountered a man as tender and artful as Ramsey had been that summer, and when they had their second affair years later, it was as wonderful.

  Tatty turned onto her back once more, her hands behind her head and her eyes on the sky and a high-flying gull. She had not slept with a man since France, and the need sometimes became oppressive. She blamed Ramsey for that.

  If he were to call right now, Gwen would answer, and Gwen professed to despise him. Tatty, totally unable to control herself, had stolen Ramsey from her that summer. But Gwen chose to hate only him for it. When he had left Tatty at the end of that summer, as Tatty had half expected him to do, it was Gwen who became furious.

  Tatty wanted to see him now, Gwen or no. France or no.

  There had been no calls from anyone. Tatty lingered about the house after breakfast, but the phone remained silent. Embarrassed by her attendance upon it, she drove to Sag Harbor by herself for lunch, and then took her sailboat out into Noyack Bay for an hour. But only that. Hurrying back, she found that a neighbor had called inviting her to a party a week hence. No one else.

  Amanda and Becky were going to the beach. Tatty decided to join them, and asked Captain Paget and Gwen to come along. Gwen, pleading fatigue, stayed behind, which irritated Tatty. Despite his profession, Paget was as nice a man as Gwen had ever met; certainly better than she could expect in the years to come.

  Paget recited poetry to her on the beach, Robert W. Service, and, of all people, Elinor Wylie. He showed off for them, diving repeatedly into the surf, which had become quite heavy. His back muscles were lean and corded, contorted in places by a long curving scar. Tatty made herself stop looking at them.

  “Mr. Greene called while you were away,” Gwen said, when they returned.

  “Sid Greene?” Cyril’s head snapped up in the manner of a dog whose name had been spoken.

  “Yes. He wants to have lunch with you on Friday.”

  “Did he say where?”

  “Yes. At the Plaza, the Edwardian Room, at one o’clock. You’re to call his office tomorrow to confirm.”

  “That’s all he said? Nothing more?”

  Cyril was grinning again.

  “No, Tatty,” said Gwen.

  Tatty started toward the dishwasher, then halted.

  “No one else called? No one came by?”

  Gwen’s fleeting, troubled smile came and went.

  “No. No one.”

  Tatty continued to the dishwasher. Dirty dishes there were in it, a jumble of them, but not the vodka. Tatty looked back to Gwen, who sadly shrugged.

  “All right, you miserable sponges,” Tatty said, her eyes darkening. “I thought I made myself clear. I’m not going to finance all of your drinking problems. This is not Hollywood.”

  “We went all the way to Southampton looking for an open liquor store,” Alice said. “They’re all closed for Labor Day.”

  “‘The Liquor Stores of Southampton Are Closed,’” said Cyril, dramatically. “A tragedy in one act.”

  “You could have gone Saturday.”

  “But Tatty,” said Becky. “We did.”

  “Not a tragedy,” said Cyril. “A farce.”

  Tatty leaned back against the sink, folding her arms. She was not going to let these people turn her into a shrew. No one had ever called Tatty Chase less than a lady.

  “We’ll get ourselves all the liquor we need,” said Paget, slowly. He reached beneath his chair and pulled forth the bottle of vodka, pouring what little remained of it into what appeared to be a glass of Coca-Cola. He had preceded her into the house while she had put the MG in the garage.

  “How?” said Amanda, her eyes flirtatious beneath pointedly lowered lids.

  “We’ll steal it.”

  Paget picked the perfect beach party, eight or nine people seated in a semicircle around a large bonfire, facing the ocean. A long plank with a number of large bottles had been set to the side, the side nearest the entrance to the beach.

  Paget and Tatty dropped to a crouch and then flattened out into a crawl, moving silently but with surprising swiftness through the now cold sand. About thirty or forty yards distant from the plank, Paget halted, lifting his head slightly to study their target.

  “No dogs,” he said. “Bien. Rien de chiens.”

  “I feel silly,” she said.

  “No you don’t. You’re enjoying yourself. Have you ever done anything like this before?”

  “Just some pranks in college.”

  Paget began moving forward again. A tall woman by the fire stood up, turning her back to the flames, seemingly looking at them. But she saw nothing, and soon a man in a
sweatshirt pulled her down again. Paget smiled, the flicker of the fire in his eyes. They soon reached the outer circle of light, and waited.

  Amanda’s primal scream came precisely on time. Repeating it, more a long screech this time, she lurched along the sand at the water’s edge, stumbled, then tottered on, screaming one more time.

  Paget touched Tatty’s arm and they began to creep forward again, toward the firelight. Tatty heard a slow thudding, and looked to see Becky come by, riding bareback, having somehow coaxed her old horse into a lumbering canter. All was going according to plan.

  They reached the liquor plank unnoticed. Paget silently took two half-gallon bottles of what appeared to be whiskey and slipped them under his arms. Tatty less silently pulled a similarly large bottle of what she hoped was gin into the sand, and snatched at a smaller one that looked to have rum in it. They began to ease themselves backward, back toward the sheltering darkness, Tatty’s breath coming fast.

  She was enjoying this. She was enjoying Paget.

  Once again in the shadows, they paused to make certain they were undetected, then turned and ran to the bluff. A basket was there. After dumping the bottles in it for Gwen and Alice to haul up to the top, Paget slipped his arm around Tatty’s waist. She let him keep it there until, laughing in celebration of their wonderful triumph, they reached the road.

  When Gwen and Alice joined them with the basket a moment later, Gwen said nothing. She let her eyes linger on the two of them, and then nodded, as though in blessing. They all walked on slowly, giving the others a chance to catch up. Cyril and Clara were the last.

  Chattering happily, they were caught suddenly by a flare of headlights at the next curve in the road. With Cyril in the lead, the others scrambled over a stone wall into the trees to their right. Gwen, struggling with the heavy basket, was the last to disappear. Tatty and Paget remained where they were, even when it was obvious the approaching car was a police cruiser. It stopped beside them, and Joe Walsh rolled down the window.