The Kitchen Boy by Robert Alexander

utterly obvious that there was no way it could be done, no way an autocrat could rule so vast a country, at least not without complete terror and oppression. Why, during his arrest the former Tsar read the anti-Semitic,
Protocols of the Elders of Zion
, which he found “very timely reading matter.” He never learned, however, that the book was an entire fabrication, composed by his own tsarist secret police, whose duty it was to maintain order for their master, but who instead incited the hate and riots that toppled him. So in the end this is how Nikolai II must be viewed: a very caring man of moderate abilities who, although utterly devoted to his country, was unable to transform the unworkable autocratic system thrust upon him. Period. That simple.
    You know, Tsar Nikolai and Comrade Lenin were like two great trains running toward each other at a colossal speed. The closer they came, the faster they went. They were traveling, however, on two entirely different sets of tracks, and so they should have passed by each other. They should have missed completely and zoomed on, racing toward their remarkable but very different destinations and goals. And yet… yet they collided head on with a great, terrible force, killing millions upon millions around them. And do you know why these two trains that were on two different sets of tracks collided so terribly? Because it was their fate, their destiny. And not just theirs alone, but all of Russia’s.
    Forgive me. It’s true. I wander. I wander in my heart and my thoughts. Such is the curse of any emigrant, to abandon one’s home and never find another, to always flounder in a sea of remorse. Your dear grandmother handled it much better than I, but then again she was a far superior person in so many ways.
    Well, then, fate marched on…
    Later that day the Romanovs had a real
obednitsa
, a liturgy without communion, their first in three months. Aleksandra arranged a small altar all by herself, draping one of her shawls on a table, setting out her images – her treasured icons – and then surrounding them with birch tree branches. It was lovely in its simplicity. And she and the daughters sang quite nicely. Father Storozhev in fact came, and while we all wondered if he might bring a note or news of some kind, there was nothing. Nor could there have been, because the priest was escorted in by Komendant Avdeyev, who never left his side.
    And then?
    Well, later in the day the girls darned various linens with Nyuta, then helped their mother arrange their “medicines,” for this was an ongoing affair, their hiding of the last of their jewels. While the two suitcases of larger gems had been secretly left with the nuns in Tobolsk, you only have to peruse the last pages of Aleksandra’s diary to see evidence of their clandestine stitching of the smaller diamonds. “Arranged things all day, tatted.” “Tatyana sowed my j.” “Arranged medicines with Yevgeny Sergeevich.” “Arranged things, tatted, heart enlarged.” “Arranged things.” “Arranged things, tatted, read.”
    Finally, on the morning of July 16, slightly more than twelve hours before they were all slaughtered, the long, secret task was complete. In the final journal entry of her life – the very one where she mentions how I was taken away – Aleksandra simply noted, “Olga & I arranged our medicines.” You see, it took the careful hands of all six women – the Tsaritsa, the four grand duchesses, as well as the maid – weeks to finish with the 42,000 carats, and doing so with precious little time to spare. As if they had sensed the hour of death was upon them, by noon of that day all the jewels were wrapped in cotton wadding, then packed and stitched ever so tightly into the double corsets of those beautiful girls, which of course proved such a horrible mistake.
    The Tsar spent the rest of the day reading, pacing, and smoking at the open window. Later he had a sitting bath – I, myself, brought him hot water