The Secret Wife by Gill Paul

Author:Gill Paul
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008102159
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2016-07-15T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-Four

Lake Akanabee, New York State, late September 2016

It was a blazing hot day but Kitty shivered as she lay on the shore by her cabin reading about the murder of the Romanovs on the night of the 16th–17th of July, 1918. The account was based on a statement given by Yurovsky, the chief executioner, so was as close to the truth as would ever emerge.

It was around one-thirty when Eugene Botkin, the family doctor, was wakened by Yurovsky. He said that the situation was unstable as the Czech Army drew closer and that the Romanovs should be wakened and told to come down to the basement for their own safety until they could be moved elsewhere.

The family took forty minutes to pull on their clothes: Nicholas and Alexei in soldiers’ tunics and Alexandra and the girls in white blouses and skirts. They were carrying small bags and seemed calm. Nicholas turned to the servants and remarked ‘Well, it seems at last we are getting out of this place.’ When Alexandra asked about their possessions, Yurovsky assured her everything would be packed up and sent on.

Kitty knew there had been a false alarm when they had thought they were being moved a couple of days earlier so perhaps they weren’t sure if this was another one.

At 2.15 a.m., Yurovsky led the party of ten down the darkened staircase to the ground floor then out into the courtyard. Nicholas carried Alexei in his arms. Another door led down twenty-three steps to a basement and they were ushered into a bare room with an unshaded light bulb hanging from the ceiling.

Alexandra immediately asked for chairs: she could not stand for long because of her sciatica, and Alexei was too weak to stand at all. Two chairs were brought, and Yurovsky asked the girls and the servants to stand behind the Tsar and Tsarina, almost as if he were posing them for a photograph. He said a truck was coming to take them to safety, then left them alone while he went to check on the arrangements.

They must have been sleepy, Kitty thought, after being roused from their beds. None of them seemed unduly alarmed. Did they whisper amongst themselves? Perhaps they speculated on where their next destination might be.

Next door the guards sat drinking vodka and nervously checking their weapons. The Fiat truck Yurovsky had ordered pulled into the courtyard and, after checking it, at 2.45 a.m. he led his eight co-conspirators into the room where the Romanovs waited. They were alarmed to see faces they did not recognise, but hearing the truck outside, must have imagined their departure was imminent. Nicholas asked, ‘What are you going to do now?’

Yurovsky produced a sheet of paper and began to read: ‘In view of the fact that your relatives in Europe continue their assault on Soviet Russia, the presidium of the Regional Soviet, fulfilling the will of the Revolution, has decreed that the former Tsar Nicholas Romanov, guilty of countless bloody crimes against the people, should be shot …

Kitty tried to imagine the terror and confusion in the room.

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