The shots were coming one at a time now, and Sergei stopped in the middle of the dark road, fear gripping at his heart. Who was doing all this shooting, in the dead of night, and why?
Pushing the wheelbarrow as fast as he could over the bumps and ruts in the dirt road, he arrived at the sharp-staked palisade surrounding the house, and when the sentry called out who was there, he said, “It’s Comrade Sergei Ilyinsky. With the gasoline.”
“Bring it around back.”
In the courtyard, Sergei found a truck waiting, and the stench of gunpowder in the air … and blood. His eyes shot to the iron grille covering the basement window, but it was dark inside and he couldn’t see a thing.
Yurovsky, stepping out of the house, saw the gas canisters and said, “That’s all?”
“There aren’t many tractors in Ekaterinburg,” Sergei said, careful to keep any emotion out of his voice.
“Go upstairs and get the sheets and blankets.”
Sergei mounted the back steps and found the house in commotion. Other guards were trooping up and down the stairs, their arms filled with linens, their mouths crammed with food, a couple swigging vodka from a jug. By the time he got to the room Anastasia shared with her sisters, the four cots had already been stripped bare. Books and diaries, combs and shoes, were scattered around the floor. Arkady, one of the Latvian guards who had recently been brought to the house, was stripping some curtains from the whitewashed windows.
“What’s going on?” Sergei said. “Where are they?”
Arkady looked at him quizzically, and said, “In Hell, if you ask me.” Then, tossing the curtains to Sergei, he said, “Take these to the basement.”
His arms clutching the curtains, Sergei stumbled down the stairs, his mind refusing to accept the awful reality of what must have just happened, then across the courtyard and down to the cellar. The acrid smell of smoke and death grew stronger with every step he took, and Sergei’s heart grew as heavy as a stone. At the bottom, Yurovsky, in his long coat, was holding a lantern and directing the operation.
The floor was so awash in blood that the soldiers trying to roll the bodies up in the sheets and drapery kept slipping and sliding.
“Just get them out of here!” Yurovsky was barking. “The truck’s right outside.”
Sergei scanned the carnage; he saw Dr. Botkin’s gold eyeglasses gleaming on his bloody face, he saw Demidova with a bayonet still stuck in her chest. He saw the Tsar’s worn old boots sticking out of a sheet, and his young son Alexei — one side of his face obliterated by a close gunshot to the ear — being wrapped in a tablecloth, like a shroud.
But where was Anastasia?
“Don’t just stand there!” Yurovsky said, smacking him on the shoulder. “Get to work.”
Sergei stepped into the morass, searching for Ana, and found her beneath the corpse of her sister Tatiana, soaked in blood, her little dog crushed beneath her. Her hair was caked with blood, her clothes were ripped to shreds, her hands were clutching something under her bodice.
Sergei felt the anger and the bile rise in his throat, and if he could have done it, he’d have killed Yurovsky and every other guard in the house on the spot. The House of Special Purpose — that’s what the Ipatiev mansion had been officially called, and Sergei had always taken it to mean imprisonment.
Now he knew that it meant murder.
He laid the curtains on the floor — they were the color of cream, and imprinted with little blue seahorses — and gently rolled Ana’s body onto them. He looked at her face, smeared with blood and ash and tears, then closed the ends of the curtains over her as if he were wrapping a precious gift.
“Move along,” Yurovsky shouted, “all of you!”
Sergei could hear the truck engine idling in the courtyard. The Latvians were throwing the remaining bodies over their shoulders like carpets, and carting them out. Sergei picked up Anastasia in his arms, as if carrying a child to bed, and leaving the cellar he heard Yurovsky joke, “Careful not to wake her.”
Sergei was numb with shock and grief, and when the guards told him to toss the body into the back of the truck with all the rest, Sergei simply climbed inside instead, and slumped against the side wall with the body between his knees.
“You always were sweet on that one,” a guard cracked. “That’s why the commandant sent you into town tonight.” He slammed the half panel at the back of the vehicle shut. “Now you can help bury her.”
He banged on the side of the truck, and the engine was put into gear. With a jolt, the truck lumbered across the courtyard, out through the palisade, and onto the Koptyaki road. The pile of corpses — Sergei counted ten others in all — gently swayed and rocked, as if it were all a single creature, at every bump and pothole in the road. The Tsar and his valet, the Tsaritsa and her maid, their daughters, the heir to the throne, the cook, the doctor … all tangled together in an indiscriminate mound of blood-soaked linens.
Sergei wondered where the truck was headed … and what he would do when he got there.
An old car, crammed with shovels, gasoline, and Latvians was jouncing along behind them.
For at least an hour, they forged through the forest on old rutted mining roads. Sergei could hear tree branches on either side scratching at the sides of the truck and the tires squelching in the mud.
And then — unless his mind was playing tricks on him — he heard something else, too.
He bent his head.
It came again.
A moan.
He pulled the cream-colored curtain away.
“Ana,” he whispered, “are you alive?”
Her eyes were closed, and her face twitched like someone still caught in a nightmare.
“Ana, be still!”
Her face was wrenched in agony, her lips parted, and she started to cry out.
Sergei pressed his palm to her mouth, and said, “Ana, don’t make a sound. Do you hear me? It’s Sergei. Don’t move.”
She tried to scream again, and again he flattened his hand on her lips.
“If they know you’re alive, they’ll kill us both.”
Her eyes opened, filled with panic, and he leaned even closer so that she could see him better. Despite all that had passed between them, in looks and words and flowers, the bounds of propriety had never been crossed. Until this night, Sergei would no sooner have dreamed of holding a grand duchess of Russia than he would have imagined himself becoming the Tsar.
Even as his heart soared — the love of his life was cradled in his arms! — Sergei’s mind raced. How had she survived the slaughter? Was the blood covering her body her own — or her sister’s?
And how could he ever spirit her away from this caravan of death?
The truck was going up a hill, the gears grinding, when he heard the thundering of hoofbeats and wild shouts coming through the forest. The brakes squealed, and even as the truck stopped, Yurovsky was leaping like a demon from the car behind, cursing and brandishing a long-muzzled Mauser.
Was Anastasia going to be rescued after all? Were these the White cavalry officers, loyal to the Tsar, that Ana and her family had long prayed for? Or could they be renegade Czech soldiers who abhorred the revolutionaries? Sergei didn’t care, just so long as there were enough of them to overpower the Red Guards. He’d take his own chances.
“Keep still,” he said to Anastasia, smoothing her befouled hair with his hand.
He could hear horses snorting, and the creak of wagon wheels.
“We were promised we’d get them!” someone was shouting. “All of them — alive!”
“Well, you’re too late for that now,” Yurovsky replied. “But this truck can’t make it any farther. We’ll need those carts to get the bodies to the Four Brothers.”