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“10 March. Slept well, despite the conditions we now find ourselves in. The thought that we are together gladdens and consoles me.… Looked through papers, put them in order, and burned them….

“11 March.… In the morning received Benckendorff, learned from him that we shall be staying here quite a while. A pleasant thought. Continued burning letters and papers.”

Did he assume the possibility of his diary’s confiscation? Undoubtedly. But he did not stoop to concealment.

He “burned papers”—that was it!

Indeed, soon after, a portion of their papers would be taken away by the Provisional Government’s Special Commission.

“14 March.… Now plenty of time to read for my own pleasure. Although also enough time to sit upstairs with the children.”

A peaceful life in their beloved Tsarskoe Selo. But the life of prisoners.

“March 21.… This afternoon Kerensky, the current minister of justice, came quite unexpectedly. Walked through all the rooms, wanted to see us, spoke with me for about 5 minutes, introduced the new commandant of the palace and then left.… He ordered poor Anya put under arrest and taken to town along with Lili Dehn.”

A parting of friends. The valet Alexander Volkov brought Alix in a wheelchair. She and Anya managed an embrace and practically had to be torn apart. But Sana managed to tell her friend something sublime:

“There”—she pointed to the sky—“and in God we are always together.”

A car took Anya away to Petrograd, to prison.

She kept looking back at the palace disappearing behind the trees. Tsarskoe Selo’s park, the white statues, St. Feodor’s Cathedral—all would become a dream. The house of this family.… For twelve years it had been her home as well. She would recall the large semicircular window, the sovereign’s study. That was how she would now refer to Nicky. Sana too would disappear and remain the empress who had bestowed friendship on modest, devoted Anya. There she was, a little girl, catching a glimpse of the empress at Ilinskoe: tall, with thick golden hair to her knees. And there was the empress in the first days of their friendship—dressed in dark, fur-trimmed velvet and a long pearl necklace. An Abyssinian in a white turban was at the table. And there was the war. And the tsaritsa’s face in the kerchief of a Sister of Mercy—thin lips pressed, gray eyes sorrowful.

Meanwhile, events were unfolding.

Nicholas’s diary:

“27 March.… Kerensky came and asked me to limit my meetings [with Alix] to mealtimes and to sit separately from the children. As if he needed this to keep the famous Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies quiet. Forced to obey to avoid any kind of violence.”

Their correspondence and personal papers were gathered up for the “Special Commission of Inquiry examining abuses of the ministers of the tsarist government and other high officials of the overthrown regime.”

The commission was supposed to respond to the persistent rumors current in society about the tsar’s family’s treason and dealings with Germany.

All this time the commission was slaving away. As secretary of the commission, the great poet Alexander Blok went every morning to the Fortress of Peter and Paul to record interrogations. The fortress’s cells made him think of the brilliant receptions at the Winter Palace. It was as if all of Petersburg society had moved into the fortress: prime ministers, department heads, the war minister, secret service chiefs.

At night the poet was writing his Notebook.

“Manasevich-Manuilov is loathsome, undersized, and smooth-shaven.… Prime Minister Sturmer is a large, melancholy ruin, old man’s rubber-soled boots.… The other prime minister, Goremykin, is an utter wreck, quite feeble—about to die. The director of the Police Department, Beletsky, has stubby fingers and greasy hands … an oily face, talkative.… Unusual eyes—narrow, as if tear-filled—a steady glimmer.”

Blok also gave a portrait of Anya in her cell.

“We went to see Vyrubova in her cell. She was standing by the bed with a crutch propped under her broad (misshapen)