Anastasia's Secret by Susanne Dunlap Read Free Book Online

and Alexei had breakfast in her room, and Papa never joined us anymore, spending all morning with his military maps and his generals. I had to find a way to talk to him at some point, to let him know that his great army might not be as strong as he thought. Yet even then I knew I would never dare speak to him about it. He would ask too many questions about how I knew. I, the youngest girl, the one no one took very seriously because I was always clowning around.
    In any case, the opportunity never arose. Matters were already too far gone for anything he might have done to have made a difference. And as for me—how could I have thought any action of mine would have mattered?

C HAPTER 6
    We departed for the trip to Moscow a week later to ask God’s blessing on the war and protection for our soldiers. Our train arrived on August 17, at a crowded and jubilant Moscow station. We made our way slowly in a file of carriages through the streets toward the Kremlin. All the bells of all the four hundred and fifty churches pealed out, but they were not loud enough to drown out the raucous cheers of the people who swarmed the streets, hung out of windows, and surged onto balconies—some even perched on low rooftops. I had never heard so many voices singing “God Save the Tsar,” our national anthem. Mama’s cheeks were pink with happiness. Olga and Tatiana tried hard to look very dignified. Alexei stood straight and tall, despite the fact that his ankle was hurting him, and Mashka and I grinned like fools. For a brief moment, it seemed that all the bad things I’d heard or that had been hinted at had evaporated with the morning mist.
    At the Iberian Gate, Papa got out of the carriage and went into the chapel, as is the custom—or was at any rate—to kiss the icon of the Virgin of Iberia. When he returned, we proceeded through the gate into the Red Square. I remember the look on his face as if it had all happened just yesterday. It’s a look I have seen many times since, but have never managed to capture in a photograph. He did not look proud or triumphant. He seemed overcome with sorrow and yet at the same time content, listening to the voices of his people glorifying his name. I wonder if he had some premonition of what was to come. Perhaps he was thinking of Alyosha, who weakened visibly throughout the day, and who awoke the next morning in such pain that he could not walk.
    The next morning I went to see Alexei in his room. “Are you really unwell, Alyosha?” I asked. All our teasing and tormenting ceased when he had one of his attacks.
    “It’s my ankle. It hurts so terribly. I’m not as bad as I’ve been, but look.” He lifted the covers and I saw his ankle, swollen and bruised, misshapen. I wanted to touch it and kiss it and try to make it better, but even the lightest touch was agony to him. “I don’t want to miss the blessing. It’s terribly important,” he said.
    When Alyosha was ill, his eyes looked much older than his years, as if all the pain he had suffered in his young life had lodged there. He was only eleven, yet he had had a lifetime of agony. “As long as you’re not moaning or can’t sit up, one of Papa’s Cossacks can carry you. You won’t miss it,” I assured him, stroking a stray hair out of his eyes.
    Mama came in, already dressed in her caftan with the heavy embroidery in gold thread and wearing her imperial crown. If it wasn’t for the anxious expression in her eyes, she would have looked like an icon herself. “Baby, are you too ill to come?”
    “No, Mama. I must go. Only I cannot walk.”
    “Perhaps you should stay here and rest.”
    “No, Mama, I am going. I am the tsarevich. I must be there.”
    I had shrunk away from Alyosha’s bed while my mother was with him. When he was ill, she seemed not even to see me. This occasion was no different, until Papa came in.
    “How’s your little brother?” Papa asked me quietly.
    “He’s in pain, but he will come. He can’t walk,