The Lost Crown by Sarah Miller

Author:Sarah Miller [Miller, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-11-18T16:00:00+00:00

27.

OLGA NIKOLAEVNA

January 1918

Tobolsk

“Citizen Romanov, you and your son will remove the epaulets from your uniforms immediately if you know what’s good for you,” Commissar Nikolsky announces. The glint in his eye matches the shine on his boots. He works his mouth as though he’s savoring Papa’s reaction.

Papa sets down his glass of tea. “Our epaulets? Why?”

My heart feels like it’s beating sideways as Aleksei reaches up to finger the narrow colored strips on his own shoulders where Papa’s initials are embroidered. What harm can there be in epaulets? Do they even mean anything, now that the army answers to Lenin?

“My apologies, Nikolai Alexandrovich,” Pankratov adds, “but the men of the rifle detachment have voted one hundred to eighty-five in favor of the guards and officers removing imperial epaulets from their uniforms. We request that you and your suite do so as well to avoid provocation. It’s for your own safety. We fear insults and attacks in the town.”

Nikolsky stalks off, his face curled up as if this whiff of courtesy makes him ill.

“This is absurd,” Papa says. “We aren’t even allowed into town.”

“My apologies,” Pankratov says again, and excuses himself.

“Incomprehensible,” Papa says, sipping his tea. “This little man thinks he can order us about?”

“Papa,” Aleksei asks, “are we going to do it?”

Papa takes another swallow of his tea, considering. I don’t breathe until he answers. “Nyet, konechno, son. Pankratov may be in charge of this house, but he is not an enlisted man, and I will not take such orders from a civilian.”

Pride and anxiety storm hot and cold inside me. In ten months under arrest we have never defied our captors.

“Such childishness,” Mama sputters over her sewing. All the others have gone outside for their afternoon walk. I wish I were with them—I’d trade my whole poetry notebook for one of Papa’s cigarettes right now. “It’s all that horrid Nikolsky’s doing, filling the men’s heads with Bolshevik nonsense. They’re testing us. Your papa won’t stand for this kind of disrespect.”

Her words needle at me, drawing questions through my mind like an itchy woolen thread. Part of me wants to laugh at myself for worrying so over shoulder boards, but I know what epaulets mean to Papa. One look at the shoulders of his uniform and anyone can see he’s honorary colonel-in-chief of the Fourth Guards Rifle Regiment, and was adjutant to tsars Alexander II and Alexander III. His epaulets are like no one else’s in all of Russia, and he wears them buttoned on every military shirt and coat he owns. They’re as much a part of my papa as his beard and cigarettes.

“Maybe Lenin’s government will issue new epaulets,” I offer. As soon as I say it, I know it’s a stupid idea. Papa would never wear Bolshevik insignia, and Lenin certainly won’t commission a set of epaulets for the ex-tsar. It doesn’t matter, though—Mama hasn’t even heard me.

“Russia needs authority, not equality. How do they expect to lead a country if every soldier is on equal footing?” She sighs, making it sound as if expelling air is an irksome chore.

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