Chapter Twenty-Nine
The Ipatiev House,
now the seat of Government of the Russian Empire
Ipatiev House, Yekaterinburg, Russia
While Tobolsk had been safer than Yekaterinburg, safety—security—is a defensive measure . . . and wars are not won by defense. Then, too, here was what amounted to the newly reformed Imperial Treasury. Here was industry, both in terms of extraction of raw materials and potentially the processing of those same materials into arms and supplies.
Here was where the seat of government, for the nonce, had to be.
Here, too, was a comfortable house, a mansion, really, the Ipatiev House, commandeered from Ipatiev by the Reds, now rented by the Imperial Government, with the rent being held in escrow on Ipatiev’s behalf.
Bochkareva’s former command, now under Princess Tatuyeva, had had a serious job scrubbing out all the blood left by their assault when Mokrenko had retaken the city for the empress. There was still the stump of a broken bayonet stuck in the wooden stockade wall.
Lastly, and perhaps most important of all, here was Aunt Ella, whom Guard Captain Turgenev had also suggested, and in the strongest possible terms, ought not be moved any distance after her ordeal. Turgenev hadn’t explained the precise nature of the ordeal—perhaps he didn’t know all of it and hadn’t wanted to ask—but from what he had seen and relayed Tatiana still had a pretty good idea of what had been done to her aunt.
“She needs you now more than you need her,” Turgenev had wired.
Ella herself, and such as had survived among her party, had a private wing of the local lazaret.
Tatiana lowered the newspaper clipping and let her eyes return to the handwritten note from her sister. Anastasia assured her in the strongest language that she was well, and begged Tatiana’s leave to remain in New York while Maria and their grandmother continued on to London.
“Send General Kostyshakov in, please, and ask my aunt if she’s up to coming here for a visit,” Tatiana said, her eyes not leaving the page. She heard the page’s footsteps rapidly retreating, and a moment later, a soft cough told her that Daniil had arrived.
“Yes, Your Majesty?”
“Whom can we spare to send to New York?”
“Truly, no one. But Bochkareva should arrive there any day. Why do you ask?”
“My sister has decided to stay there and try to promote our cause with the Americans. It is a good thought, and a good plan . . . but there has already been an incident of violence. She is safe, thanks in part to Dostovalov, but—”
“I will find a contingent.”
Tatiana drew in a deep breath and shook her head. “No,” she said. “You are right. We need every man here, and with the addition of Bochkareva’s forces, the Guards we sent with my sisters should be enough. Perhaps Bochkareva can stay with Anastasia while Maria goes on to London . . .”
Daniil took another step towards where Tatiana sat at her correspondence table.
“If Your Majesty needs me to send more men, I will send more men.” He spoke softly, in the tone she knew was hers alone.
“No,” she said again. “There is no need. It was just my first impulse. I—I sent them away so that they would be safe! But it appears that nowhere in the world is safe.”
“We fight every day to change that, Your Majesty, you know that.”
“I do,” Tatiana said with a sigh. “I am just tired. And worried. Thank you, Daniil.”
“Anything you need.” He bowed at the waist and then as he straightened, he brushed his fingertips across his chest in a gesture that only they knew.
My heart, he said, is yours.
Tatiana nodded and touched her own fingers to her breast under the guise of adjusting her shawl.
“There’s one other thing, Daniil. If your duties permit, I’d like you to pick up and escort my aunt here this evening after dark.”
Nodding understanding, his eyes held hers for a second, and then he turned and left the room.
The Tsarina looked back down at the letter from Anastasia and smiled.
Despite the night’s chill, Tatiana stood outside the Ipatiev House’s stockade, waiting. She interlaced her fingers, keeping her hands clasped tightly at her waist so that they would not tremble. Her knuckles shone white in the paltry light from the entryway behind her.
“Your Majesty, please,” her guard said, his voice pained. “It is cold, and you are terribly exposed. We will alert your staff as soon as they have arrived—”
“There is no need,” Tatiana said, her voice as icy as the wind that whipped through the narrow space between buildings. “They are here.”
She pointed down the lane to the left, where a pair of headlights knifed through the gloom as a lone vehicle navigated the last turn before pulling slowly up to a stop before the entrance. Her guardsman muttered a soft curse that Tatiana ignored as she allowed him to push her behind the dubious shield of his body as he stepped forward, his rifle at the ready.
“It’s all right, Nagorny. I can see that she has not been content to wait inside where it is warm and safe.” Daniil’s voice, pitched low but clear, carried across the small space between the vehicle and Tatiana as he exited.
“It would not have been safe, neither for you, nor for your aunt. Now, I beg of you, go inside. We will be right behind you.”
“But—”
“Every moment Your Majesty delays is another moment both you and your aunt are in danger. Please get inside the stockade.”
Tatiana raised her chin and glared at Daniil from behind her erstwhile guard.
“Very well,” she said, her voice going even colder. “Bring her in.” She turned on her heel and stepped through the stockade gate, then strode back to the main door, thence to the small parlor that she’d been using as a sitting room.
Tatiana stepped into the room and strode toward the large fireplace where a footman was busy stirring the coals to life. He nodded deferentially as she murmured a quiet “thank you” before turning to look expectantly at the heavy wooden door.
She didn’t have to wait long.
Another footman pushed open the door and stood to the side, allowing her to see Daniil waiting in the darkened hallway beyond.
“The Grand Duchess Elisabeth Feodorovna,” the footman said. “And Major General Daniil Kostyshakov.”
“Thank you,” Tatiana said again, though she wasn’t really paying attention to the niceties of her serving staff. She only had eyes for the veiled figure behind Daniil. She watched, swallowing hard against pain and tears as he led this figure forward into the room, then stepped back out of the way and closed the heavy door behind himself.
“Aunt Ella?” Tatiana whispered.
The woman in front of her lifted the veil that obscured her face and removed it from her hair; hair that had once been the same rich chestnut as her sister—Tatiana’s mother.
It was now a snowy white.
“My dear girl,” Ella said, her voice hoarse and trembling. She held out her arms in invitation.
Tatiana reached, tears blinding her eyes as she rushed to embrace her aunt. As her arms went around Ella’s ribs, the older woman stiffened and let out a soft sigh. But she wrapped her own thin—far too thin!—arms around Tatiana and held her close in a trembling, almost desperate embrace.
“Thanks be to God you’re alive,” Tatiana whispered. “I had so feared—”
“Thanks to God and your soldiers,” Ella murmured, letting go and stepping back. “I was—it was a very near thing.”
Tatiana swallowed against the thick emotions rising in her throat and nodded. Then she looked up and met Daniil’s eyes. “I must speak with my aunt in private. Please leave us.”
Daniil held her gaze with his own somber one for a long moment and then nodded, gesturing to the guard to follow him as he turned to leave.
“And, General,” Tatiana called. Daniil paused and turned to look back at her.
“Thank you.”
He nodded and left the room, closing the door behind him with a soft click. Tatiana took a deep breath, then faced her aunt and took hold of her slim, slender hands.
“Come, let us sit,” she said, and led Ella over to a low, comfortable sofa beside the fire. Ella followed, as docile as a child, and said nothing while Tatiana saw her seated and covered with a warm, crocheted throw blanket.
“Your majesty is fussing,” Ella said, a thread of humor winding through her tone as Tatiana poured tea for them both before sitting down next to her. Tatiana gave her a small smile and a tiny, one-shouldered shrug.
“I don’t know what else to do. These things are small comforts, perhaps, but I fear they are all I have to offer right now.”
“Dear girl,” Ella said, putting her tea down on the low side table and reaching out to take Tatiana’s hand in both of hers again. “In that you are most grievously mistaken. What you have already done has given me the greatest comfort of my life.”
“Aunt, I’m so sorry,” Tatiana whispered. “I—I read the report. I know roughly what happened . . . before you were rescued. I am so sorry my men didn’t find you sooner—”
Ella smiled, and while a vestige of dark, screaming horror flickered in her eyes, the expression felt genuine to Tatiana.
“You must not think that way,” she said, squeezing Tatiana’s fingers. “What was done . . . what those men d-did . . .” She trailed off, swallowed hard.
“Aunt Ella—”
Ella held up her right hand, closing her eyes and bowing her head in a silent plea for a moment.
“God gives us trials so that we might build our faith, child. I . . . those men were angry and ill-used. They had been misled into rejecting God, rejecting decency. Their minds had been clouded by sin and violence. They h-hurt me, and my fellow sisters and brothers in God’s service . . . but we prayed for help, and help came. Because of you, my dear. Because you chose to fight back, for our family, and for Russia and her people.”
Ella opened her eyes, and they glistened wetly in the flickering firelight. Tatiana felt her own eyes fill and a hot line of tears ran down the curve of her cheek. She sniffed in a decidedly unladylike fashion, but one hand held her teacup and saucer, and she wouldn’t have pulled the other one from her aunt’s grasp for all of her ancestors’ fortune put together.
“My body will heal,” Ella said. “Has mostly healed, in fact. With prayer and faith, the nightmares will fade in time. I-I may no longer lead my order, but I know that God has work for me yet to do. For while I pray daily for the strength to forgive those men . . .” She turned to stare into the fire for a long moment.
I suspect, thought Tatiana, that so far God has answered your prayers with a resounding “NO! Some things are never to be forgiven!”
Tatiana sat quietly, letting the tears run silently down her face as she bore mute witness to her aunt’s pain and struggle. Ella had famously forgiven her husband’s murderer, but Tatiana couldn’t imagine praying to forgive the men who had violated the sanctity of her own body. The very thought made bile burn in the back of her throat, and she swallowed several times quickly to keep that sudden nausea at bay.
“There are others like them,” Ella said, her voice low, and harder than Tatiana had ever heard it. “Others will suffer at their hands if God’s order and law are not restored. He has called you to restore them, my dear girl. And I am told that you wish me to stand by your side.”
“Yes,” Tatiana said in a half-whisper. “I said that, but that was before . . . I wouldn’t dream of pushing you. If you’re not ready—”
Ella smiled. “Who is ever ready? That is not the point. The point is that you have called me, and God has called you and I . . . I live to serve God. The men who raped me cannot take that from me.”
Tatiana blinked against the sudden flood that obscured her vision. She pressed her lips together and nodded, breathing through her nose in an attempt to keep her composure. She closed her eyes and continued nodding, even as Ella took the teacup and saucer from her hand, setting them down with a clink.
Then her aunt’s thin arms wrapped around Tatiana again, hard as iron bands. She returned the embrace, and felt Ella’s body start to shudder with silent sobs of her own.
She didn’t know how long they sat there: two women holding each other and weeping for all that they had lost, all that had been done to them and those they cared about. But before too long, Tatiana found herself drawing in a ragged breath and sitting upright.
Then she laughed, as she and Ella both reached up to wipe beneath their eyes in the exact same mannerism at the exact same time.
“You are so strong,” Tatiana said. “I pray that I can be a fraction as strong as you.”
“On the contrary,” Ella said. “I am, of myself, quite weak. It is God who is strong. Lean on your faith, my dear. He will never lead you astray.”
“Well, and now that you’re here, you can help keep me on the right path.” Tatiana offered a watery smile with this tiny attempt at humor. To her great satisfaction, Ella let out a soft, delighted laugh, and for just a moment, Tatiana saw the echo of the beautiful young girl her aunt had once been.
“I shall do my best, Your Majesty.”