Chapter Twenty-Five
Maria Feodorovna (Formerly Dagmar of Denmark
New York City, New York, USA
To Maria’s dismay, it was a few more days before their grandmother arrived in New York. But arrive she did, and Maria’s cry of joy rent Anastasia’s heart with guilt. The two sisters had struggled not to snap at each other since arriving in New York, a situation not helped by the fact that the weather had turned nasty gray and rainy.
But Maria Feodorovna, Dowager Empress of Russia, swept into their hotel suite on a morning when the sun streamed through broken clouds to light up their hotel room. The sisters’ collective mood brightened at the sight of their grandmother.
“Oh, my darlings!” said Maria Feodorovna, once known as Dagmar of Denmark, as she threw her arms around her granddaughters. Her words came out strangled and strained with the tears that ran unheeded down her elegant features. Anastasia’s own eyes filled, and she wrapped her arms around her grandmother’s waist and inhaled deeply the scent of her lavender and rosewater perfume.
“Grandmama!” Maria sobbed. “Oh, Grandmama!”
For just a moment, Anastasia let herself drift back to the child she’d been not so long ago. Only two years, but it felt like a lifetime had passed.
Anastasia dropped her arms, sniffed back her tears, and straightened up with a watery smile for her grandmother. While Maria sobbed on, Dagmar comforted her and petted her hair, but her eyes snapped to her younger granddaughter with interest.
“It is good to see you, Grandmama,” Anastasia said, wiping her eyes to regain her composure. “Beyond good. Wonderful.”
“Indeed,” Dagmar said. “Wonderful is a good word for it. I am so grateful to our Lord God for preserving you girls. You have been at the center of all my prayers ever since—” She pressed her lips together and closed her eyes, then bent to kiss the top of Maria’s bent head.
“Come now,” the Dowager Empress went on, “but let us not wallow in the sadness of tragedies past. We are together, and you are both coming with me to London as soon as it is safe to travel! We shall have a very gay time there, you can be certain.”
“Do you have any idea when it will be safe?” Anastasia asked, as Maria hiccupped and pulled back, trying to still her flood of tears.
“Not too much longer, I think.” Dagmar let go of her embrace and reached out to take her granddaughters’ hands in hers. “A few weeks, perhaps. Maybe a month or two. With the Americans fully in the war now, the rumors are rampant. The Boche cannot hold out much longer. Rather, they cannot believe that they can hold out for much longer, and that’s the same thing.
“So, we will stay here in New York for a short time, but do not despair! There is something like society here, and some pleasures to be had. Indeed, perhaps tomorrow we shall go look at one of their museums. These bourgeois American upstarts are absolutely greedy for art, and they’ve managed to amass a decent collection here in New York. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she asked the still-weeping Maria, who sniffed and nodded.
“There are some people here you should meet as well. The British Ambassador, of course, a few others. You will see. We will have quite a merry time of it here in the wilderness!”
This is hardly the wilderness, Anastasia thought as her grandmother squeezed her hand. But she smiled back and nodded, and then hugged Dagmar again, and then the still-weepy Maria. While her older sister tried to put on a brave face at the thought of staying in New York for up to two more months, Anastasia found herself thrilled. The opportunity to further explore this fascinating new country beckoned, and a curl of excitement burned within her chest.
That excitement wasn’t lessened when the news came that Germany had asked for an armistice.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was quite a substantial building.
Anastasia shook her head and quickly divested herself of her hooded cape as they hurried to get inside the tall, arched doorways. The rain continued to pound down, filling the New York streets with streams of water and mud and painting the stately buildings a darker gray or brown.
“Well, that was quite an adventure, wasn’t it, Grandmama?” Maria said brightly as she, too, doffed her outerwear and handed it to the woman waiting nearby for that purpose. Anastasia smiled a thanks at the woman, but Maria didn’t even seem to notice her presence It wasn’t unusual. They’d been raised not to see the ever-present staff that made palace life possible. But in this country with its egalitarian ideals, her sister’s lack of manners made Anastasia feel rather uncomfortable.
Dagmar, at least, also thanked the woman in a low tone, which earned her a smile and Anastasia’s gratitude. She then turned and looked toward someone approaching from further inside.
“Your Majesty.”
Anastasia turned toward the familiar sound of crisp British English and found herself looking at the top of an elegant woman’s head as she bent her neck and her body in a formal curtsey.
“Lady Rice,” Dagmar said, a smile in her voice. “It is so good to see you.”
The British woman rose with a smile. “Welcome to New York, your Majesty,” she said. “The pleasure, and honor, is all mine.”
“Maria, Anastasia, may I present Lady Rice, wife of Sir Cecil, the British Ambassador to the United States. I have known her for many years, since my sister was first married. Lady Rice, Grand Duchess Maria Nicolaevna and Grand Duchess Anastasia Nicolaevna. My granddaughters.”
“Your Imperial Highnesses,” Lady Rice said, dipping once more into that deep, formal curtsey. She was both the daughter and the wife of British diplomats and knew the ropes well.
“Please forgive an old friend of your grandmother’s the impertinence, but it is my very great honor to meet you both. Tales of your stalwart bravery under the most horrific circumstances have traveled around the world . . . and . . . I am so sorry for your losses—”
“Thank you,” Anastasia murmured, while Maria sniffled as if she were about to tear up yet again. Dagmar reached out and put a quieting hand on her friend’s wrist.
“Yes,” Dagmar said, “thank you . . . but we are not here today to speak of our family’s great tragedies. Quite the opposite, in fact! I have brought the girls here to see the great American collection of art pieces.”
“It is rather good, for a colony,” Lady Rice said, with a dry smile. “I was delighted to get your note. My husband is one of the benefactors of the museum here—well, you know the family has a large collection, and it was helpful to his business interests to have some of the colonists owe him a favor, so we’ve lent them several pieces. Consequently, I’m allowed the privilege of giving you a private tour, though I do think the museum board is rather hoping I’ll convince Your Majesty to become a benefactress as well.”
“Perhaps I shall,” Dagmar said. “Please relay my thanks to the board and curator. Shall we proceed?”
“Right this way, Your Majesty . . .”
Anastasia found herself rather liking Lady Rice. The woman’s curious mix of supercilious formality and wry humor amused her, and appeared to satisfy Maria’s sense of self-importance to the point that her older sister actually relaxed and looked around with enthusiasm. Lady Rice informed them that the building itself was often considered part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection, as it had been designed by a well-known American architect and finished by his son in what Anastasia learned was called the “beaux arts” style. She let most of the information that followed those tidbits flow over and around her as she wandered through the admittedly beautiful columns and arches of the space, losing herself in the paintings and sculpture exhibited in each of the various rooms.
Anastasia didn’t know how long she’d been lost in her thoughts and contemplation when her grandmother gently touched her shoulder to pull her attention from one particular piece.
“What do you think, Nastenka?” Dagmar asked, her lips curving in a gentle little smile. “It’s not a bad collection, is it?”
“It’s wonderful,” Anastasia said, shaking her head slightly.
“Really?” Dagmar raised her eyebrows in surprise. “I would have thought you would have been more cynical. It’s not as if this is the first time you’ve seen fine art, after all.”
“Yes, we had lots of ‘art’ in the palaces,” Anastasia said, waving a hand in a tiny gesture of dismissal. “But I always thought it lacked . . . something. Almost as if it were only for show. Even the treasures acquired by multi-great grandmother Yekaterina seem designed to give the appearance of opulence and culture.” She lifted her hand and indicated the painting in front of her, a simple piece depicting a young woman in blue sitting by the sea. “This isn’t art for royalty; this is art for the people, and most of it’s a good deal finer than what graced the walls of our family’s palaces.”
Dagmar half-turned her body to study the piece anew, even tilting her head to the right as she regarded it. “Auguste Renoir,” she said, almost sounding as if she was tasting the artist’s name. “A French painter. One of those who experimented with nontraditional methods . . . Impressionists, I think they call them.”
“I find so interesting how she is so clear, her face and body . . . and yet the background is a blur, a mere suggestion of light and color and movement.” Anastasia stared at the painting, unable to look away.
“I suspect that was the idea,” Dagmar said with a smile in her tone. “To draw the viewer’s attention to the girl’s beauty. It is a lovely piece.”
“Yes,” Anastasia said, and then blinked, breaking the painting’s spell. She turned to her grandmother and smiled back. “Thank you, Grandmama, for bringing us here. This is an amazing place, and the American people are fortunate to have it. I wonder if—” She broke off, unsure if Dagmar would approve of what she was about to say.
Dagmar’s smile widened, and she threaded her arm through Anastasia’s, gently pulling her back toward the central part of the museum. “You are thinking that once we recover our palaces and our own collections, that perhaps we, too, should have a museum like this, where anyone may come and enjoy the art? It isn’t all ostentatious and shallow, you know.”
Anastasia chuckled. “That is fair,” she said. “Even if our ancestress did not have the most refined artistic taste, there have to be one or two pieces with a soul tucked away somewhere!”
Dagmar joined her in soft laughter, and then sighed. “Darling Nastenka. How quickly you are growing up! I think that allowing our people access to our family’s art collections is a wonderful idea, provided . . .” She trailed off and stumbled just a little.
“Provided there is anything left after the war . . . and the Reds,” Anastasia finished for her, her tone grim. She shivered, though it wasn’t exactly cold.
Dagmar didn’t answer. The two of them held tightly to one another as they sought to rejoin the rest of their small party.
Anastasia would look back on that moment and see it as the point when everything changed. She didn’t know it at first, obviously. It wasn’t until years had passed that she could see how that conversation in front of the painting of the woman in blue shaped the course of her entire life going forward.
At the time, however, it had simply been an afternoon’s diversion concocted by her grandmother to amuse them and pass the time while they waited for word that it was finally safe to cross the Atlantic.
Dagmar had arranged several such diversions for them—one the very next evening. They were to attend a dinner party with some prominent American citizens. Like the museum trip, the whole thing had been arranged by Lady Rice, who, despite being British, was clearly a linchpin of American society, not just in Washington but here as well.
The party was held at a mansion on New York’s Fifth Avenue. Maria hadn’t wanted to go, and had pleaded a headache to remain in the hotel. Thus, Anastasia faced the stares and curiosity of New York’s elite with only her grandmother at her side. Dressed to the nines, she wore a bit of jewelry, slightly damaged, as a brooch.
Well, Anton Ivanovich was there, too, but he tended to fade into the background, as a good bodyguard must. While he was never out of Anastasia’s sight—nor she out of his—no one even seemed to notice him.
No one, that is, until Anastasia’s dinner companion.
The gentleman was older, with a mustache and bushy eyebrows that peeked out from behind wire-rimmed glasses. He appeared to have some kind of recent leg injury, for he limped as he approached her before dinner. But he smiled kindly, and politely and properly asked Lady Rice for an introduction.
“Your Highness, may I present the Twenty-Sixth President of the United States, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt. Mr. President, Her Highness, Grand Duchess Anastasia Nicolaevna of Russia.”
Lady Rice spoke in a perfectly modulated tone, yet Anastasia would swear that every other conversation had stopped and everyone swiveled to look as the (former, she was given to understand; Grandmama had said that the current fellow was someone named “Wilson”) President very properly shook her hand. Not as a commoner greets an aristocrat, but as a gentleman greets a lady of equal social status.
Anastasia flicked her gaze to her grandmother’s, who stared back with her polite court mask firmly in place. No help or guidance there.
This is a test, Anastasia realized abruptly. The Americans are testing me!
Suddenly very glad that Maria had chosen not to come, Anastasia took a deep breath before speaking, and hoped her voice sounded clear and confident, rather than displaying her nerves and awkwardness for everyone to see.
“Mr. President,” she said. “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
Dagmar’s eyebrows shot up, but the man in front of her squeezed her fingers and gave her a slowly widening, almost conspiratorial grin.
“Your Highness,” he said in a soft, clear voice. “The pleasure is most assuredly all mine.”
Conversation resumed around them, and Anastasia felt a great sense of relief. Mr. Roosevelt smiled at her again and presented his arm for her to take. She did so, exhaling softly.
“Well done,” he murmured under his breath as they joined the general perambulation of the party guests toward the dining room. “Well done indeed.”
“So you were testing me, sir?” Anastasia couldn’t keep her tone completely devoid of tartness. But Mr. Roosevelt just chuckled deep in his chest.
“You’re a quick one, Your Highness. I hope I didn’t make that too uncomfortable for you, but I had to see what kind of Imperial Princess you really are.”
“Not a very good one, according to my sister.”
“The Empress?”
“No, my other sister.”
“Ah. Well. On that, she and I disagree. You’re in a new place, surrounded by new people. It’s good to see that you’ve yet got a flexible mind, despite growing up in the dark heart of traditional European autocracy.” He spoke as if he enjoyed the rhythm of his words, as if he were trying out phrases before writing them into a book. Despite herself, Anastasia began to smile.
“‘Traditional European Autocracy’ as you put it, sir, has not served my family particularly well of late,” she said as they approached the table. “On that point, the Empress and I agree.”
Anastasia felt, more than saw, the former President turn to stare at her for a moment in apparent surprise. She did not look at him, but rather allowed herself to be seated and relished the point that she seemed to have scored.
As the meal progressed, Anastasia was slightly surprised to find that she was thoroughly enjoying herself. The food was delightful, and Mr. Roosevelt was a fascinating dinner companion. Despite serving as President, the man had fought in a war against Spain, owned a cattle ranch, and had written books on the subjects of conservationism and life on the American frontier. She had not known any of this before dinner, of course, but found out during the course of the conversation.
Had he been anyone else, Anastasia would have suspected him of bragging, but he didn’t simply list these accomplishments for her to admire, but rather mentioned them naturally, offhandedly, as they came up within the general context of the topic at hand.
It was during their discussion of his experiences while fighting the Spanish that Roosevelt mentioned Dostovalov.
“You’ve got a good man watching your back, there,” he said as the staff cleared the latest course. “I had one or two like him in the Rough Riders. Trusted them with my life.”
“As I trust him with mine,” Anastasia said. “Anton Ivanovich is dedicated to my family.”
“A member of one of your household’s guards from before, then?”
“Oh no!” Anastasia startled herself with a laugh. “Quite the opposite, actually. He was . . . well, he was one of our guards, but it was while my family was captive in Tobolsk. Only he and another fellow became familiar with us, and they helped our forces rescue us . . . most of us . . . some of us.”
“I am sorry for the loss of your parents and siblings,” Roosevelt said. “It is a hard thing, I know. You’re a brave young woman.”
“Thank you,” Anastasia said. “But I am not half as brave as my sister. She . . . well. You say it is a hard thing to lose one’s parents, sir, and so it is. But it is even harder to come to the realization that perhaps one’s parents, beloved as they may have been, were not quite correct in everything that they did.”
Roosevelt put down the water glass he’d picked up and turned his head to look more fully at Anastasia while she spoke. She drew a deep breath and continued on.
“Tatiana . . . Tatiana has done this. Has looked that truth in the face and forced me and others to do the same. I loved my parents, sir, and they loved us above all else. But while they were the best of parents, my sister and I have come to know that they failed as leaders, as rulers. They couldn’t protect our family, just as they couldn’t protect millions of Russian families all throughout our land . . . and that, sir, is the worse tragedy.”
Anastasia glanced to the side to find Roosevelt smiling at her, something like affection dawning in his eyes.
“I quite agree,” he said. “So, then what, pray, does your sister the Empress intend to do about it?”
Anastasia let out a short, humorless laugh.
“You would not ask me if you knew her, sir. Tatiana keeps her own counsel. She will take inputs and advice, but she gives no sign of what she intends to do until it is time to do it.”
“Not a bad policy,” Roosevelt said. “Especially for someone in such a precarious position. But given what you know about her, what do you think she intends to do?”
Anastasia lifted her wineglass and took a long sip in order to buy herself time to properly frame her answer.
“I think,” she said slowly, lowering the glass back to the table. “No . . . I know that she means to save Russia from the evil of Bolshevism. And she means to preserve our country for all its people. Those things I know. As to the how of it . . . ? Well, there is a war to be won, first. And as I said, she is not forthcoming until she means to be.”
“And what would you do?”
“Me, sir?”
Roosevelt smiled. “Yes, you. As you said, there is still a war on in your country. I suspect that’s part of the reason you’re here. If something—may heaven forbid—were to happen to the Empress, what would you do?”
“Well, Maria is the elder,” Anastasia said softly, mindful of Tatiana’s admonition not to tell anyone about her plans for the succession. “But if it did come to me, I suppose I—I would look here, if I am perfectly honest.”
“Here? What do you mean? You would abolish your monarchy entirely?”
“No, not exactly,” Anastasia said. Frustration surged within her as she fought to articulate the thoughts swirling in her head. “I just . . . would change it. Autocracy cannot work in the modern world. Russia deserves better. Her people deserve better. They deserve a world where anything is possible. Where art and culture and science are available for all. Where a man’s birth or station isn’t a barrier, but rather just a starting place. Where all are equal under the law . . . and that law is clearly stated and understood by all citizens.”
“Do you really think that is possible in a monarchist nation, Your Highness?” Roosevelt continued to smile, but the tone of his voice said that he clearly did not think so.
“I—I think so. Because, well . . . your country has its laws, doesn’t it? And you were the leader for a time? Did not your laws delineate your role as President?”
“They do. Our Constitution does, which is our highest law.”
“Yes! Well, I think perhaps we could have a constitution, too. One that firmly states the role of the monarch and how she—or he, in the future—interacts with other parts of the government. The elected parts. The Duma, for example.”
“A constitutional monarchy? That’s a difficult line to walk, Your Highness.”
“What does the difficulty matter, if it’s the right choice for Russia? They need Tatiana right now. She is the symbol of resistance to the Bolshevik evil. Without her to unite the various factions under one banner, the Reds are almost certain to win. Russia needs its Tsarina, and a constitution both.”
Roosevelt’s smile grew, and he lifted his glass and tapped it against the rim of hers. “Well said, Your Highness. Well said. You’re a remarkable young woman.”
“If not for my birth, sir, I’d be like every other young woman. I’m surprised to have to remind you of that!”
“No, not quite. Not every other young woman could have survived what you have survived,” he said quietly. “Nor come out of those experiences with your spirit and optimism intact. I said before that you were brave. But at the time, I don’t think I knew the half of it. It has been my honor to meet you tonight.” To Anastasia’s shock, Roosevelt inclined his head to her in a very proper gesture of respect that would have fit perfectly at court in St. Petersburg.
“The honor has been mine, sir,” she said quietly as the staff began circulating with the next course.
“How long will you stay in New York, Your Highness?” he asked a few moments later.
“I don’t exactly know, sir,” she said. “My grandmother is to take us to London by ship once she determines that it is safe to do so.”
“I wonder if you would like to come for a visit to my home of Sagamore Hill. I should dearly like for my wife and daughter Alice to meet you.”
“I am sure I would love it,” Anastasia said with a smile. “Though I don’t know what Grandmama has planned, it may be that I cannot come.”
“I understand,” Roosevelt said with a smile. “Perhaps I shall bring Alice here to meet you. She’s a bit older than you are, but I think you would like her.”
“I am certain I would, sir.”
At that, Roosevelt laughed. “I wouldn’t be too sure. Alice is one of a kind! But I do think you might get along famously. There is a chance, at least, that you would.”