Anastasia's Secret by Susanne Dunlap

Author:Susanne Dunlap [Dunlap, Susanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Childrens
Published: 2010-05-29T22:00:00+00:00

The flames illuminated a large area of the park through which I had planned to walk to reach the hidden gate. It would lead out not far from the imperial railway depot, I realized. Not that I thought for a moment we would be able to board one of our trains and steam away to Finland. All our automobiles had been confiscated for the use of the Provisional Government, as had the drivers. Probably the trains were similarly employed.

But if we could leave the park undetected, Russia was a vast land. There were hundreds of thousands of hectares where someone might not recognize the former tsar and tsaritsa, the heir, and four grand duchesses.

I sighed. There was the biggest obstacle. We would not be parted from one another. But singly or in small groups we might stand a chance for escape, if it ever came to that.

I shook myself free of these morbid thoughts, and concentrated on accomplishing the task Sasha had set me. I eventually reached the yew hedge, remembering how frightened I had been that early morning when I’d gone to meet Sasha, and how little danger I had actually been in.

I plunged through the hedge, scratching myself a little in the process. At first, I found only the high, close iron palings that terminated in sharp points. I was grieved to see that the points had been made even more forbidding by the addition of a thick coil of barbed wire. No one could scale such a barrier. I remember that it had once seemed a secure, protective enclosure, there to keep our private world safe and inviolate. But now, I saw that we had unwittingly created our own prison. Or if not we, the tsars from centuries past.

The moon had passed its highest point and started its descent toward the west. The night had become frosty, and I was chilled through. Only the hardiest spring flowers would survive early April, the snowdrops and winter anemones. How I used to love seeing their brave beauty blanket the woods for a few weeks, before the weather was warm enough to allow the crocuses, narcissi, and tulips to grow. Even in the moonlight, I could see little patches where tiny flowers had bravely taken root around piles of snow and sticky mud. The world went on, just as it always had, despite what had happened to us. How peaceful, I thought. How simple.

And then I couldn’t help comparing the natural world to the actions of human beings, who are supposed to be better than the beasts and the flowers. It was those human beings who had thrown poor, lame Anya into prison. Who had made a terrible war, with millions of young men killed and so many lands and homes laid waste. Who dug up the bones of a holy man and burned them for no good reason.

I continued along behind the hedge, looking for the gate that I knew had to be there. Just as my hands were becoming numb with cold, I found it.

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